The Ahrimanic Deception - R Steiner

The Ahrimanic Deception

Lecture by Rudolf Steiner

The lecture presented here was given in Zurich on October 27, 1919. In the
collected edition of Rudolf Steiner' s works, the volume containing the German
texts is entitled, Der Innere Aspekt des sozialen Rdtsels; Luziferische
Vergangenheit, Ahrimanische Zukunft

Zurich, October 27, 1919

In addressing a public audience today on the most important question of our time, it
makes a great difference if one speaks from a knowledge of the deeper forces of world-
historical evolution, that is, from initiation- science, or if one speaks without such
knowledge. It is relatively easy to speak about modern questions if one relies upon data
of external knowledge which are considered scientific, practical, and so on. It is,
however, extraordinarily difficult to speak about these questions from the standpoint of
initiation- science - from which indeed everything is derived with which we have to deal
at such gatherings as ours today. For he who speaks from that standpoint about problems
of the time knows that he is opposed not only by the casual, subjective opinions of those
to whom he speaks. He knows too that a great part of mankind today is already under the
control, from one side or another, of Ahrimanic forces of a cosmic nature which are
growing stronger and stronger. To explain what I mean by this, I must give you a kind of
historical survey of a fairly long period of human history.

From various statements which have been made here and which you will also find in
some of my lecture-courses, you know that we have to place the beginning of our modern
age in the middle of the fifteenth century. We have always called this period - of which
we are really only at the beginning - the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. It has replaced the
Greco-Latin Epoch, which we reckon from the middle of the eighth century B.C. to the

middle of the fifteenth century; and further back still, we have the Egyptian-Chaldean
epoch. I have merely indicated this so that you may remember where, in human evolution
as a whole, we place the epoch in which we feel ourselves standing as modern men.

Now you know that at the close of the first third of the Greco-Latin Epoch, the Mystery
of Golgotha took place. And from many different aspects we have characterized what
really came about for human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, in fact for the
whole evolution of the earth. Today, into this broad historical survey, we will place
various things concerning mankind which are connected with this Mystery.

With this in view, let us glance back into far earlier times, let us say, into the ages about
the beginning of the third millennium B.C. You are aware how little is said in external
historical tradition about this early evolution of the human race on earth. You know, too,
how external documents point over to Asia, to the Orient. From many anthroposophical
sources, you will know that the further we go back in mankind's evolution, the more we
find a different constitution of the human soul, and something like an ancient, original
wisdom underlying the whole evolution of humanity. You know, further, that certain
traditions of an ancient wisdom of mankind were preserved in close, secret circles, right
into the nineteenth century. They have even been preserved into our own time - but not,
for the most part, at all faithfully.

When a man of today learns to know something of this original wisdom, he is astounded
at the depths of the realities to which it points. Yet in the course of the studies we have
been pursuing for many years, it has been shown that this widespread wisdom-teaching of
ancient times must always be contrasted with the understanding of life and the world that
was possessed by the old Hebrew people and bore a completely different character. With
a certain justice the widespread original wisdom is described as the heathen, pagan
element, and to this is opposed the Hebrew, Jewish element. From external traditions and
literature you are aware how the Christian element then arose out of the Jewish.

You can already gather from these external facts something that I beg you to bear in

mind, namely, that it was essential in humanity's evolution to confront the ancient
heathen element and its wisdom with the Jewish element out of which Christianity
evolved partially, at all events. The primeval heathen or pagan wisdom in its totality was
not destined to have the sole influence on the further evolution of mankind. And now the
question must arise: Why had the ancient pagan wisdom, which is in many respects so
wonderful, to experience a new form, a transformation, through Judaism and
Christianity? This question inevitably arises.

The answer is supplied for Initiation-wisdom only through a very, very weighty fact,
through an event which took place far over in Asia at the beginning of the third
millennium of the pre-Christian era. Clairvoyant vision finds in looking back that an
incarnation of a supersensible Being in a human being had taken place there, just as in the
Event of Golgotha an incarnation of the supersensible Christ Being had taken place in the
man Jesus of Nazareth. The incarnation that took place at the beginning of the third
millennium B.C. is extraordinarily difficult to follow up, even with the science of
seership, of initiation. It gave humanity something of immense brilliance, having an
incisive effect. What it gave to humanity, in fact, was the primeval wisdom, beginning of
the third millennium B.C.

Viewed externally, one can say that it was a wisdom penetrating deep into reality; cold,
based purely on ideas, permeated little by feeling. The actual inner nature of this wisdom
can be judged only by going back to that incarnation which took place over in Asia at the
beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium. It is revealed to the retrospective
clairvoyant gaze that this was an actual human incarnation of the Luciferic Power.
And this incarnation of Lucifer in humanity, which in a certain way has been achieved,
was the origin of the widely extended ancient wisdom based on the Third Post-Atlantean
civilization.

There was still an after-effect, even in Grecian times, of the widespread cultural impulse
that was derived from this Asiatic, Luciferic human being. Luciferic wisdom was of the
utmost benefit to man in that epoch of evolution - brilliant in a certain way, graduated

according to the different peoples and races among which it was spread. It was plainly
recognizable throughout the whole of Asia, then in the Egyptian civilization, the
Babylonian civilization and even in the culture of Greece.

All that was possible to the humanity of that time in thought, in the realm of poetry, in
deeds, was in a certain way determined through the entry of this Luciferic impulse into
human civilization.

It would, of course, be extraordinarily philistine to wish to say: That was an incarnation
of Lucifer, hence we must flee from it! Such philistinism could make one also flee from
the beauty and greatness that has come to mankind from this Luciferic stream, for the
fruits of Greek culture with all their beauty, proceeded, as already said, from this stream
of evolution. The whole of Gnostic thought existing at the time of the Mystery of
Golgotha, an impressive wisdom shedding light deep into cosmic realities - this whole
Gnostic knowledge was inspired by the impulse coming from Luciferic forces. One must
not say that Gnostic thought is therefore false; one is merely characterizing it by saying
that it is permeated by Luciferic forces.

Then, considerably more than two thousand years after the Luciferic incarnation, came
the Mystery of Golgotha. It may be said that the men among whom the impulse of this
Mystery spread were still fully imbued in their thinking and feeling with what had come
from the impulse of Lucifer. And now there entered into the evolution of civilized
humanity an entirely different impulse, the impulse proceeding from the Christ. We have
often spoken of what this Christ Impulse signifies within civilized humanity. The Christ-
Impulse - 1 will only touch on this today - was taken up by the hearts and minds that I
have just characterized. One might say that it shone into all the best that came to man
from Lucifer. And in the first Christian centuries, men understood the Christ through
what they had received from Lucifer. These things must be faced without prejudice;
otherwise it is not really possible to understand the particular way in which the Christ
Impulse was received in the first centuries of our era.

As the Luciferic impulse began to fade more and more, men were also increasingly
unable to absorb the Christ Impulse in the right way. Consider how much has become
materialistic in the course of modern times. But if you ask yourself what in particular has
become materialistic, you must receive the answer: a great part of modern Christian
theology. For it is simply the starkest materialism to which a great part of modern
Christian theology succumbs when it no longer sees the Christ in the man Jesus of
Nazareth. It sees only the human being, the v simple man of Nazareth,' the man whom one
can understand if one will only raise one's self a little to some sort of higher
understanding. The more the man Jesus of Nazareth could be regarded as an ordinary
human being, one belonging to the ranks of other noted human personalities, the better it
pleased a certain materialistic trend of modern theology. Of the supersensible element of
the Event of Golgotha, modern theology is willing to recognize little, very little.
The impulses entering humanity from a Luciferic source sank down gradually into the
soul. On the other hand, however, another impulse, which we call the Ahrimanic, is
growing stronger and stronger in modern times. It will become increasingly strong in the
near future and on into future ages. The Ahrimanic impulse proceeds from a
supersensible Being different from the Being of Christ or of Lucifer. Equally with
v supersensible' one can say v subsensible' - but that is not the point here. The influence of
this Being becomes especially powerful in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. If we look at
the confused conditions of recent years we shall find that men have been brought to such
chaotic conditions mainly through the Ahrimanic powers.

Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third pre-Christian
millennium, as there was the Christ Incarnation at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha,
so there will be a Western incarnation of the Ahriman being some little time after our
present earthly existence, in fact, in the third post-Christian millennium. To form a right
conception of the historical evolution of mankind during approximately 6000 years, one
must grasp that at the one pole stands a Luciferic incarnation, in the center, the
incarnation of Christ, and at the other pole the Ahrimanic incarnation. Lucifer is the
power that stirs up in man all fanatical, all falsely mystical forces, all that physiologically
tends to bring the blood into disorder and so lift man above and outside himself. Ahriman

is the power that makes man dry, prosaic, philistine - that ossifies him and brings him to
the superstition of materialism. And the true nature and being of man is essentially the
effort to hold the balance between the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman; the Christ Impulse
helps present humanity to establish this equilibrium.

Thus these two poles - the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic - are continuously present in man.
Viewed historically, we find that the Luciferic preponderated in certain currents of
cultural development of the pre-Christian age and continued into the first centuries of our
era. On the other hand the Ahrimanic influence has been at work since the middle of the
fifteenth century and will increase in strength until an actual incarnation of Ahriman
takes place among Western humanity.

Now it is characteristic of such things that they are prepared long in advance. Ahrimanic
powers prepare the evolution of mankind in such a way that it can fall a prey to Ahriman
when he appears in human form within Western civilization - hardly then to be called
"civilization' in our sense - as once Lucifer appeared in human form in China, as once
Christ appeared in human form in Asia Minor. It is of no avail to give oneself illusions
today about these things. Ahriman will appear in human form and the only question is,
how he will find humanity prepared. Will his preparations have secured for him as
followers the whole of mankind that today calls itself civilized, or will he find a humanity
that can offer resistance. It does not help at all to give oneself up to illusions. People
nowadays flee the truth, and one cannot give it to them in an unvarnished form because
they would ridicule it and scoff and jeer. But if one gives it to them through the
"Threefold Social Organism" as one now tries to do, then they will not have it either - not
the majority, at any rate. The fact that people reject these things is just one of the means
which the Ahrimanic powers can use and which will give Ahriman the greatest possible
following when he appears in human form on earth. This disregard of the weightiest
truths is precisely what will build Ahriman the best bridge to the success of his
incarnation. And nothing will help us to find the right position in regard to the part played
by Ahriman in human evolution except an unprejudiced study of the forces through
which Ahriman's influence works, as well as learning to know the forces through which

mankind can arm itself against being tempted and led astray. For this reason we will cast
a brief glance today at various things which would foster support of Ahriman and which
Ahrimanic powers, working out of supersensible worlds through human minds down
here, will particularly employ in order to make his following as numerous as possible.
One of the means is this - that it is not realized what is the actual significance for man of
certain kinds of thought and conception which predominate in modern times. You know,
indeed, what a great difference there is between the way a man felt himself to be within
the whole cosmos in the Egyptian age, let us say, and even in the time of Greece, and
how he feels since the beginning of the modern age, since the close of the Middle Ages.
Picture to yourselves a well-instructed ancient Egyptian. He knew that his body was
constituted not merely of the ingredients which exist here on earth and are embodied in
the animal kingdom, plant kingdom, mineral kingdom. He knew that the forces which he
saw in the stars above, worked into his being as man; he felt himself a member of the
whole cosmos. He felt the whole cosmos not only quick with life, but ensouled and
imbued with spirit; in his consciousness there lived something of the spiritual beings of
the cosmos, of the soul-nature of the cosmos and its life. All this has been lost in the
course of later human history. Today man gazes from his earth up to the star- world and to
him it is filled with fixed stars, suns, planets, comets, and so on. But with what means
does he examine all that looks down to him out of cosmic space? He examines it with
mathematics, with the science of mechanics. What lies around the earth is robbed of
spirit, robbed of soul, even of life. It is a great mechanism, in fact, only to be grasped by
the aid of mathematical, mechanistic laws. With the help of these mathematical,
mechanistic laws we grasp it magnificently! A student of spiritual science is undoubtedly
just the one to value the achievements of a Galileo , a Kepler , and others, but what
penetrates human understanding and consciousness through the tenets of these great
spirits in human evolution merely shows the universe as a great mechanism.

What this means is only revealed to one who is able to grasp man in his whole nature. It
is all very well for astronomers and astro-physicists to present the universe as a
mechanism which can be understood and calculated by mathematical formulae. This
indeed is what a man will believe in the time from waking in the morning till going to

sleep again at night. But in those unconscious depths which he does not reach with his
waking consciousness but which yet belong to his existence and in which he lives
between going to sleep and waking, something quite different concerning the universe
flows into his soul. There lives in the human soul a knowledge which, although unknown
to the waking consciousness, is yet present in the depths and moulds the soul - a
knowledge of the spirit, of the life of the soul, of the life of the cosmos. And although in
his waking consciousness man knows nothing of what goes on there in communion with
the spirit, soul and life of the universe while he sleeps - in the soul the things are there;
they live within it. And much of the great discord felt by modern man is derived from the
disharmony between what the soul experiences and what the waking consciousness
acknowledges as its world-conception.

And what does the whole spirit and purport of anthroposophical spiritual science say
about such things? It says: What the ideas of Galileo, Copernicus, have brought to
mankind is grand and mighty, but not an absolute truth, by no means an absolute truth. It
is one aspect of the universe, one side from a certain standpoint. It is only through the
arrogance of modern man that people say today: "Ptolemaic world-system - childishness;
that is what men had when they were still children. We have made such great strides -
right v to the stars' and that is what we now take as the absolute." It is just as little an
absolute as the Ptolemaic system was an absolute, it is one aspect. The only right view -
according to spiritual science - is to realize that all that is accepted by way of mere world-
mathematics, mere world-schematism of a mechanical order, does not furnish man with
absolute truth about the universe, but with illusions. The illusions are necessary because
mankind goes through varied forms of education in its different stages of evolution. For
modern education we need these illusions of a mathematical nature about the universe,
we must acquire them, but we must know that they are illusions. And most of all they are
illusions when we transpose them into our daily environment, when, in accordance with
the atomic or molecular theories, we even endeavour to create a kind of astronomy for the
substances of the earth. A right attitude in regard to the whole of modern science, insofar
as it thinks along these lines, will recognize that its knowledge is illusion.

Now, in order that his incarnation may take the most profitable form, it is of the utmost
interest to Ahriman that people should perfect themselves in all our illusory modern
science, but without knowing that it is illusion. Ahriman has the greatest possible interest
in instructing men in mathematics, but not in instructing them that mathematical-
mechanistic concepts of the universe are merely illusions. He is intensely interested in
bringing men chemistry, physics, biology and so on, as they are presented today in all
their remarkable effects, but he is interested in making men believe that these are
absolute truths, not that they are only points of view, like photographs from one side. If
you photograph a tree from one side, it can be a correct photograph, yet it does not give a
picture of the whole tree. If you photograph it from four sides, you can in any case get an
idea of it. To conceal from mankind that in modern intellectual, rationalistic science with
its supplement of a superstitious empiricism, one is dealing with a great illusion, a
deception - that men should not recognize this is of the greatest possible interest to
Ahriman. It would be a triumphant experience for him if the scientific superstition which
grips all circles today and by which men even want to organize their social science,
should prevail into the third millennium. He would have the greatest success if he could
then come as a human being into Western civilization and find the scientific superstition.
But I ask you not to draw false conclusions from what I have just said. It would be a false
conclusion to avoid the science of the day; that is the very falsest conclusion which could
be drawn. We must get to know science; we should get an exact knowledge of all that
comes from this direction - but with the full consciousness that we are receiving an
illusory aspect, an illusion necessary for our education as men. We do not safeguard
ourselves against Ahriman by avoiding modern science, but by learning to know its
character. For modern science gives us an external illusion of the universe, and we need
this illusion. Do not imagine that we do not need it. We must only fill it in from quite
another side with actual reality gained through spiritual research, we must rise from the
illusory character to the true reality. You will find reference in many of my lecture-
courses to what I am telling you today, and you will see how everywhere it has been
sought to enter fully into the science of our time, but to lift it all to the sphere where one
can see its real value. You cannot wish to get rid of the rainbow because you know it to
be an illusion of light and color! You will not understand it if you do not realize its

illusory character. But it is just the same with all that modern science gives you for your
imagination of the universe, it gives only illusions and that must be recognized. It is by
educating oneself through these illusions that one arrives at the reality.

This, then, represents one of the means used by Ahriman to make his incarnation as
effective as possible - this keeping of man back in scientific superstition.

The second means that he employs is to stir up all the emotions that split men up into
small groups - groups that mutually attack one another. You need only look at all the
conflicting parties that exist today, and if you are unprejudiced you will recognize that
the explanation is not to be found merely in human nature. If men honestly try to explain
this so-called World War through human dis -harmonies, they will realize that with what
they find in physical humanity they cannot explain it. It is precisely here that
"supersensible" powers, Ahrimanic powers, have been at work.

These Ahrimanic powers are working, in fact, wherever dis-harmonies arise between
groups of men. Now the question arises on what foundation is most of what we are
considering based?

Let us proceed from a very characteristic example. - The modern proletariat has had its
Karl Marx. Observe closely how the doctrines of Karl Marx have been spread among the
proletariat, with Marxist literature reaching practically immeasurable proportions. You
will find all the methods of our present-day science used in the books; everything is
strictly proved, so strictly proved that many people, of whom one would never have
supposed it, have fallen victim to Marxism. What was the actual destiny of Marxism? It
spread at first, as you know, among the proletariat and was firmly rejected by university
science. Today there are already a number of university scientists who have veered round
to acknowledging Marxist logic. They adhere to it because its literature has proved that
its conclusions are in excellent accord, that from the standpoint of modern science
Marxism can be quite neatly proved. Middle-class circles have unfortunately had no Karl
Marx who could have proved the opposite for them; for just as one can prove the

ideological character of right, morality, and so forth, the theory of surplus value and
materialistic historical research from the Marxist standpoint, so is it possible to prove
their exact opposite. A middle-class, bourgeois-Marx would be fully able to prove the
exact opposite by the same strict method. There is no sort of swindle or humbug about it;
the proof would work out right.

Whence does this come? It comes from the fact that present human thinking, the present
intellect, lies in a stratum of being where it does not reach down to realities. One can
therefore prove something quite strictly, and also prove its opposite. It is possible today
to prove spiritualism on the one hand and materialism on the other. And people may fight
against each other from equally good standpoints because present-day intellectualism is
in an upper layer of reality and does not go down into the depths of being. And it is the
same with party opinions. A man who does not look deeper but simply lets himself be
accepted into a certain party-circle - by reason of his education, heredity, circumstances
of life and State - quite honestly believes - or so he thinks - in the possibility of proving
the tenets of the party into which he has slipped, as he says. And then - then he fights
against someone else who has slipped into another party! And the one is just as right as
the other. This calls forth chaos and confusion over mankind that will gradually become
greater and greater unless men see through it. Ahriman makes use of this confusion in
order to prepare the triumph of his incarnation and to drive men with increasing force
into what they find so difficult to realize - namely, that by intellectual or modern
scientific reasoning today, one can prove anything and equally well prove its opposite.
The point is for us to recognize that everything can be proved and for that reason to
examine the proofs put forward in science today. It is only in natural science that reality
is shown by the facts; in no other field can one consider intellectual proofs valid. The
only way to escape the danger that threatens if one accepts the lures of Ahriman and his
desire to drive men deeper and deeper into these things, is to realize through
anthroposophical spiritual science that human knowledge must be sought for in a stratum
deeper than that in which the validity of our proofs arises. And so, in order to create
dissensions, Ahriman also makes use of what develops from the old conditions of
heredity which man has really outgrown in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. The

Ahrimanic powers use all that is derived from old circumstances of heredity in order to
set men against each other in conflicting groups. All that comes from old differences of
family, race, tribe, peoples, is used by Ahriman to create confusion. "Freedom for every
nation, even the smallest . . ." These were fine-sounding words. But the powers hostile to
man always use fine words in order to bring confusion and in order to attain the things
that Ahriman wishes to attain for his incarnation.

If we inquire: Who stirs up nations against each other? Who raises the questions that are
directing humanity today? - the answer is: the Ahrimanic deception which plays into
human life. And in this field men very easily let themselves be deceived. They are not
willing to descend to the lower strata where reality is to be found. For, you see, Ahriman
skillfully prepares his goal beforehand; ever since the Reformation and the Renaissance,
the economist has been emerging in modern civilization as the representative governing
type. That is an actual historical fact. If you go back to ancient times, even to those that I
have characterized today as the Luciferic - who were the governing types then? Initiates.
The Egyptian Pharaohs, the Babylonian rulers, the Asiatic rulers - they were initiates.
Then the priest-type emerged as ruler and the priest-type was really the ruler right up to
the Reformation and the Renaissance. Since that time the economist has been in
command. Rulers are in fact merely the handymen, the understrappers of the economists.
One must not imagine that the rulers of modern times are anything but the understrappers
of the economists. And all that has resulted by way of law and justice - one should only
study it carefully - is simply a consequence of what economically oriented men have
thought. In the nineteenth century the "economical" man is replaced for the first time by
the man thinking in terms of banking, and in the nineteenth century there is created for
the first time the organization of finance which swamps every other relationship. One
must only be able to look into these things and follow them up empirically and
practically.

All that I stated in the second public lecture here (The Social Future, October 25, 1919) is
profoundly true. One could only wish that it were followed up in all details; it would then
be seen how fundamentally true these things are. But just because this rulership of the

mere v symbol for solid goods' (that is to say, money - quotation from the lecture) has
arisen, Ahriman has been given another essential medium for the deception of mankind.
If men do not realize that the rights-state and the organism of the Spirit must be set
against the economic order called up through the economists and the banks, then again,
through this lack of awareness, Ahriman will find an important instrument for preparing
his incarnation. His incarnation is undoubtedly coming, and this lack of insight will
enable him to prepare it triumphantly.

Such means can be used by Ahriman for a certain type of man. But there is another type -
indeed the two are often mixed in one personality - and this also, from a different
direction, provides Ahriman with an easy way to success.

Now it is a fact that in real life, total errors are not so harmful as half- or quarter-truths.
Total errors are soon seen through, whereas half- and quarter-truths mislead people. They
live with them, these partial truths become a pan of life and cause the most horrible
devastation.

There are people today who do not realize the one-sidedness of the Galileo-Copernican
world-conception, or who at least do not see its illusory character, or are too easygoing to
examine it. We have just shown how wrong that is. But there are also people today,
numberless people who acknowledge a certain half-truth, a very significant half-truth,
and who do not go into the question of the purely hypothetical justification of it. Strange
as it may appear to many people, it is just as one-sided to view the world solely through
the Gospel and reject any other search into true reality, as it is to view the world from the
standpoint of Galileo and Copernicus, or of university materialistic science in general.
The Gospel was given to those who lived in the first centuries of Christianity, and to
believe that today the Gospel can give the whole of Christianity is simply a half-truth. It
is therefore also a half-error which befogs people and thus furnishes Ahriman with the
best means of attaining the goal and the triumph of his incarnation.

How numerous are those who think they are speaking out of Christian humility, but in

reality out of dreadful arrogance, when they say: "Oh, we need no spiritual science! The
homeliness, the simplicity of the Gospels leads us to what men need of the eternal!" A
frightful arrogance is expressed, for the most part, in this apparent humility, which can
very well be used by Ahriman in the sense I have indicated. For do not forget what I
explained at the beginning of today's lecture, how in the time in which the Gospel falls,
men were still permeated by the Luciferic impulse in their thought, feeling and general
views, and that they could understand the Gospel by a certain Luciferic Gnosis. But the
grasp of the Gospel in this old sense is not possible today. No real understanding of the
Christ can be gained if one relies merely on the Gospel, especially in the form in which it
has been handed down. There exists nowhere today a less true understanding of Christ
than in the various faiths and confessions.

The Gospel must be deepened by spiritual science if we wish to gain an actual grasp of
the Christ. It is then interesting to examine the separate Gospels and arrive at their real
content. To accept the Gospel as it is and as numberless people accept it today, and
particularly as it is taught today, is not a path to Christ; it is a path away from Christ.
Hence the confessions are moving further and further away from Christ. To what sort of
Christ-conception does a man come who will accept the Gospel and only the Gospel,
without the depth given by spiritual science? He comes ultimately to a Christ - but that is
the utmost that he can reach through the Gospel alone. It is not a reality of the Christ, for
today only spiritual science can lead to that. What the Gospel leads to is an hallucination
of the Christ, a real inner picture or vision, yet only a picture. The Gospel today provides
the way to come to a vision of the Christ, but not to the reality of Christ. That is just the
reason why modern theology has become so materialistic. Theological commentators and
expounders of the Gospel have asked themselves: What is to be made of the Gospel?
They decide at length that in their view the result is similar to what one gets when one
examines the case of Paul before Damascus. And then these theologians, who are
supposed to confirm Christianity, but who really undermine it, say: Paul was simply ill,
suffering from nerves and he had a vision before Damascus.

The point is that through the Gospel itself one can come only to hallucinations, to visions,

but not to realities; the Gospel does not give us the real Christ, but only an hallucination
of the Christ. The real Christ must be sought today through all that can be gained from a
spiritual knowledge of the world.

These very people who swear by the Gospel alone and reject every kind of real spiritual
knowledge, form the beginning of a flock for Ahriman when he appears in human shape
in modern civilization. From these circles, from these members of confessions and sects
who repulse the concrete knowledge brought by spiritual endeavor, whole hosts will
develop as adherents of Ahriman. Now this is all beginning to come into existence. It is
there, it is at work in present humanity and one who speaks to men today with the
knowledge of spiritual science speaks into it, no matter whether he is speaking on social
or other questions. He knows where the hostile powers lie, that they live supersensibly
and that men are their poor misguided victims. This is the call to humanity: "Free
yourselves from all these things that form such a great temptation to contribute to
Ahriman's triumph!"

Many people have felt something of this sort. But there is not yet courage everywhere to
come to an understanding with the historical impulses of the Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman
in the urgent way that is necessary and that is emphasized by Anthroposophy. Even those
who have an idea of what is necessary will not go far enough. For instance, look at
examples where there arises some knowledge that the secular materialistic science with
this Ahrimanic character must be permeated with the Christ Impulse, and how, on the
other hand, the Gospel must be illuminated through the explanations of spiritual science.
Consider how many people struggle to the point of really shedding light in either of these
directions by means of spiritual- scientific knowledge! Yet humanity will only acquire the
right attitude to the earthly incarnation of Ahriman if it sees through these things and has
the courage, will and energy to illumine both secular science and the Gospel by the Spirit.
Otherwise the result is always superficialities. Think, for example, of how Cardinal
Newman - who, after all, was an enlightened man, one who followed modern religious
development - at the time of his investiture as Cardinal in Rome stated openly in his
address that if the Christian Catholic teaching was to survive, a new revelation was

necessary. We have no need, however, of a new revelation; the time of revelations in the
old sense is over. We need a new science, one that is illumined by the Spirit. But men
must have the courage for such a new science.

Think of a literary phenomenon like the Lux Mundi movement that originated with
certain eminent theologians, members of the English High Church, at the end of the
eighties and beginning of the nineties of the last century. It consisted of a series of
studies, imbued throughout with the endeavor to build a bridge from secular science to
the contents of dogma. One might call it a floundering hither and thither, never a bold
grasping of secular science, never an illumination of it with the spirit. There was no
unprejudiced examination of the Gospel with the knowledge that the Gospel of itself is
not enough today, that it must be elucidated and illumined. But mankind must be
courageous in both directions and say: secular science by itself leads to illusion, the
Gospel by itself leads to hallucination. The middle way between illusion and
hallucination is found only by grasping reality through the Spirit. That is the point.
We must see through such things as these today. Purely mundane science would make
men entirely subject to illusion; in fact ultimately they would commit only follies. Quite
enough folly is perpetuated today already, for surely the World War catastrophe was a
great folly! Yet many people were involved in it who were thoroughly saturated with the
official secular science of our time. And if you notice what remarkable psychological
phenomena at once crop up when some sect or other places one of the four Gospels in the
foreground, then you will more easily understand what I have been saying about the
Gospels today. See how strongly inclined to all sorts of hallucinations are sects that pay
heed solely to the Gospel of St. John, or solely the Gospel of St. Luke! Fortunately there
are four Gospels, which outwardly contradict one another, and this has so far prevented
the great harm which such one-sidedness would cause. By being faced with four Gospels
people do not go too far in the direction of the one, but have the others beside it. One
Gospel is read aloud on one Sunday and another on another Sunday and so the illusory
power of the one is counterbalanced by that of another. A great wisdom lies in the fact
that these four Gospels have come down to the civilized world. In this way man is
protected from being caught up by some one stream, which will take possession of him -

as in the case of so many members of sects - if he is influenced by one Gospel alone.
When solely one Gospel works upon him it is particularly clear how this leads at last to
hallucination.

In fact, it is essential today to give up much of one's subjective inclination, much of what
one is attached to and thinks pious or clever. Mankind must above all seek universality
and the courage to look at things from all sides.

I wished to say this to you today so that you may realize that what one tries now to bring
about within humanity has truly deeper grounds than just some sort of subjective
prejudice. In fact one can say that it is read from the signs of the times and that it must be
brought about.

Christ in Relation to Lucifer and Ahriman

INTRODUCTION

The decision to construct the first Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland was made
in May, 1913, when Rudolf Steiner visited the future building site. Construction
began within a few weeks and the exterior of the building was completed in April,
1914. Work on the interior proceeded at a slower pace and lasted through World
War I (1914-1918). In 1914, Rudolf Steiner had begun a scaled-down model of
the Christ sculpture that was later to be installed in the Goetheanum.. As the work
on the sculpture itself began, he frequently explained its significance in his
lectures.

One of Rudolf Steiner's lecture tours, May 6 through May 18, 1915, took him to
Vienna, Prague and Linz. In all three cities he stressed that the Christ figure in the
sculptured group would have to be portrayed as a being in equipoise between the
polar forces of Lucifer and Ahriman and that this being was symbol of, and model
for, man's own existence here on earth. The Linz lecture, which is here translated,
presents the group in a world-historical context and relates the significance of the
Lucifer-Christ- Ahriman configuration to the events surrounding World War I.
Steiner sees a parallel between Christ's central, but equalizing position and
Central Europe's mission in World War I. He implies that Germany's and
Austria's militarism and political intransigence alone did not lead to war against
the world powers in the East (Russia) and the West (France, England and, since
1917, the United States). According to Steiner, World War I was the earthly
expression of a struggle between luciferic forces in the East and ahrimanic forces
in the West, and it was Central Europe's destiny to mediate between these forces.

The fundamental polarization of East and West that Rudolf Steiner saw emerging

more than six decades ago is now a political reality. While most historians today
concede that World War II was in part caused by the circumstances surrounding
World War I, few would accept Rudolf Steiner's statement from his Linz lecture
that World War I was "destined by the European karma" or, to state it more
concretely, that it was unavoidable. If the war could not have been avoided, then
the question of who was to blame or who caused it is, as Steiner says, irrelevant.
Based on this position, Steiner suggests that only one question has relevancy:
"Who could have prevented the war?" This question seems to contradict Steiner's
statement that World War I was destined by the European karma. A quick glance
at the historical record may help to clarify what Steiner meant.

In suggesting that the Russian government and possibly England, could have
prevented the war, Steiner simply deals with possibilities outside the realm of
what had to happen according to European karma. Russia's instigation of the two
Peace Conferences in the Hague (1899 and 1907) was indeed self-serving and
hypocritical, for it was Russia that, in 1914, mobilized its armed forces without
considering British proposals for peace negotiations. Under these circumstances
and considering the political immaturity of the German leadership, it was not
surprising that the German Raiser and his generals over-reacted to the Russian
mobilization and interpreted it as a declaration of war. Kaiser Wilhelm II and
Czar Nicholas II, who were cousins, frantically exchanged telegrams in which one
beseeched the other to preserve the peace, but to no avail. The war machinery was
already overheated by the forces of chauvinism and materialism so that even from
this vantage point Steiner was correct in maintaining that war was unavoidable.

Regarding the possibility of preventing the war, a glance at the major Western
powers involved in the controversy, and at Germany, reveals the following
historical facts. France, for thirty years an ally of Russia, did nothing to prevent
the war because she did not attempt to delay the hasty Russian mobilization. Her
representatives said later that France regretted the Russian action, but there seems
little doubt that France was more interested in presenting herself as the innocent

victim of an attack. On the other hand, England's foreign secretary, Sir Edward
Grey, could have prevented the war if he had taken earlier measures to discourage
Germany's militarists from asserting themselves in their country, but in view of
the English tradition and the English Constitution, this was probably not possible.
Finally, the confusion in Germany itself was caused by a lack of understanding of
who had legitimate authority to make decisions. Eventually, the political decisions
were made by generals who managed to spread the belief that the fatherland was
in peril and that Germany herself was not the attacker, but the attacked. Thus,
theoretically, any one of these three powers could have prevented the war but that,
as Rudolf Steiner points out in the lecture, is not the real issue.

Furthermore, the war did not emerge out of a French or Russian moral conviction
that was responsive to Germany militarism. Rather, the goal of crushing German
militarism emerged well after the war had begun. The war could be interpreted, in
this sense, to be inevitable because it was not generated from a goal, but exploded
and then developed its goals. In this war of attrition, materialism camouflaged
itself with nationalistic sentiment and strove for absolute expression and triumph.

It is against such a background of perplexity and misguided fervor that Rudolf
Steiner's message to Central Europeans must be read. In rejecting the question of
who had caused the war, Steiner dismissed as equally irrelevant the question of
who was to blame for materialism. Materialism was there, as was Ahriman.
Steiner admonished the Central Europeans to counterbalance materialism by
adopting a spiritual perception of life and by striving for an encounter with the
Christ.

This profound spiritual responsibility that Steiner put on the Germans in 1915 was
disregarded and the challenge passed by. After World War I it was not the Christ,
but Adolf Hitler who, under the guise of "savior," emerged as Germany's Nemesis
and was thus catapulted into a central position. When Hitler was finally destroyed,
Central Europe broke up into two parts, one of which disappeared behind the Iron

Curtain, while the other aligned with the West.

As it stands today, Rudolf Steiner's call to instate the Christ in His central position
has yet to be fully received and responded to not only by the people living in what
is left of Central Europe, but also in the rest of the world.

Peter Mollenhauer

Linz, May 18, 1915

SOME DAY WHEN THE BUILDING in Dornach that is dedicated to the spiritual
sciences is completed, it will contain, in a significant spot, a sculpture dominated by
three figures. In the center of this group a figure will tower as if it were the
manifestation of what I would call the most sublime human principle ever to unfold
on earth. Hence, one will be able to experience this representation of the highest
human principle in the evolution of the earth-the Christ, who in the course of this
evolution lived three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. A special task in the
portrayal of this Christ figure will be to make two ideas visible. Firstly, it will be
important to show how the being that we are concerned with dwells in a human body.
Secondly, it must also become apparent how this human body, in every facial
expression and in every gesture reflects a magnificent degree of spiritual refinement,
which descended with the Christ from cosmic and spiritual heights into this body in
its thirtieth year. Then there will be the remaining two figures of the group, one to the
left and the other to the right of the Christ figure, if that is the proper name for the
figure that I have just sketched. This Christ figure is placed in such a way that it
seems to be standing in front of a rock that towers noticeably at His left side, with its
peak extending over His head. On top of the rock there will be another figure, winged
but with his wings broken, who for this reason begins to fall into the abyss. One
feature in the Christ figure that must be worked out with special artistic care is the
manner in which he raises his left arm, for it is precisely this gesture that precipitates
the breaking of the wings. It must not appear, however, as if the Christ Himself were
breaking the wings of this being. Rather, the interaction of the two figures must be
portrayed artistically to show how the Christ, by the very motion of raising his hand,
is expressing his infinite compassion for this being. Yet this being cannot bear the

energy flowing upward through arm and hand, an energy that is evidenced by
indentations that the fingers of the extended hand seem to leave in the rock itself.
When this being comes into proximity with the Christ being, he feels something that
may be expressed in the words: I cannot bear the radiation of such purity upon me.

This feeling dominates so essentially as to break this upper beings wings and cause his
imminent plunge into the abyss. To make this visible will be a particularly important
artistic task and you will see how the meaning of this interaction could easily be
misunderstood. Imagine, for example, an artistic portrayal of the Christ suggesting that
merely by raising His hand He would radiate such power onto the being that his wings
would be broken, forcing the plunge into the abyss. In that case it would be the Christ
Himself who irradiated this being, as it were, with hatred, and thereby caused his descent.
Such an impression must under no circumstances be conveyed. Rather, the being must be
portrayed as having caused his own fall, for what is to be shown plunging downward,
with broken wings, is Lucifer.

Now let us consider the other side of the group, toward the right of the Christ figure.
There, the rock will have a ledge and, therefore, will be concave underneath. In this
depression there will be another winged figure, who with his arm-like organs turns
toward the ledge above. You have to visualize this as follows. To the right is the
depression in the rock and in it stands this winged figure with wings entirely different
from the figure on top of the rock. The wings of the figure on top of the rock resemble
those of an eagle, whereas the figure in the depression has bat- like wings. This figure
virtually buries himself in the cave, working in shackles, ever busy undermining the
earthly realm.

The Christ figure in the middle has his right hand directed downward and the left one
upward. Again, it will be an important artistic task not to show the Christ as wanting to
shackle this figure; rather, he has infinite compassion for this being, which is Ahriman.
Ahriman cannot bear this compassion and he writhes with pain from what the hand of the
Christ exudes. This radiance from Christ's hand causes the golden veins down in the rock

depression to wind around Ahriman's body like strong cords and shackle him. What is
happening to Lucifer is his own doing; the same is true with Ahriman. This concept is
going to take form as a sculpture that will be set up in a significant place in the new
building. Above the sculptured group we will attempt to express the same motif through
the medium of painting, but then the concept must be expressed differently. To
summarize, the group of three figures: Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman will stand at the
bottom as a sculpture, and above, the same motif will appear as a painting.

We are injecting this configuration of a relationship between Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman
into our Dornach building because the science of the spirit reveals to us in a certain way
that the next task regarding the comprehension of the Christ impulse will be to make man
finally understand how the three forces of Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman are related in this
world. To this day there has been much talk about Christianity and the Christ impulse,
but man has not yet gained a clear understanding of what the Christ impulse has brought
into the world as the result of the Mystery of Golgotha. Certainly, it is generally admitted
that there is a Lucifer or an Ahriman, but in so doing, it is made to appear that from these
two one must flee, as if one wished to say, "I want nothing to do with Lucifer and
Ahriman!" - In yesterday's public lecture (see Note 1) I described the way in which the
divine-spiritual forces can be found. If these forces did not want to have anything to do
with Lucifer and Ahriman, either, the world could not exist. One does not gain the proper
relationship to Lucifer and Ahriman by saying, "Lucifer, I flee from you! Ahriman, I flee
from you!" Rather, everything that man has to strive for as a result of the Christ impulse
must be seen as similar to the equilibrious state of a pendulum. In the center, the
pendulum is in perfect balance, but it must oscillate to one side or the other. The same
applies to man's development here on earth. Man must oscillate to the one side according
to the luciferic principle and to the other according to the principle of Ahriman, but he
must maintain his equilibrium through the cultivation of Paul's declaration, "Not I, but
Christ in me."

To understand the Christ in His quintessential activity we must conceive of Him as a
reality, as a working force. That is to say, we must realize that what wove itself into our

evolution here on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha was present as a fact. It is not
important how well or how inadequately this fact has been understood by mankind up to
this time; what is important is that it has been present, influencing human development
on earth. Much could be said to explain exactly what man has not understood about the
Christ impulse up to this time; the science of the spirit will have to contribute its share to
bring about a full comprehension of how the Christ impulse has come from spiritual
heights and influenced man's development on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. In
order to realize how the Christ has become a working force, let us visualize - as has been
done elsewhere - two events in the annals of man's evolution that have influenced the
development of the entire Western world.

You will remember an important event from history when Constantine, son of
Constantius Chlorus, defeated Maxentius and thus introduced Christianity externally into
the mainstream of Western civilization. Constantine had to fight that important battle
against Maxentius so that he could establish Christianity in his western empire as the
official religion. Had this battle not taken place as it did, the entire map of Europe would
have been different. But this battle really was not decided by military skill, that is, not by
the intellectual prowess available to people in those days, but by something entirely
different. Maxentius consulted the so-called Sibylline Books, the prophetic oracles of
Rome, which guided him into leading his army out of the assured safety of Rome's walls
into the open field, in order to confront Constantine's army. Constantine, on the other
hand, had a dream before the battle in which he was told, "If you approach Maxentius
under the banner of the Mystery of Golgotha you will reach a great objective!" Indeed,
Constantine carried the symbol of the Mystery of Golgotha - the cross - when he led his
forces into battle, even though his army was three-fourths smaller than that of Maxentius.
Enthused by the power emanating from the Mystery of Golgotha, Constantine won that
historical battle resulting in the external introduction of Christianity to Europe. When we
realize the extent to which people in those days understood the Christ impulse purely by
intellectual means, it is not surprising to find that there ensued an endless theological
quarrel. People argued whether or not Christ was consubstantial with the Lord in all
eternity, and so on. Let us say this, that the degree of knowledge of the Christ impulse

available to human beings in those days is not important, but rather the fact that the
Christ impulse was present and that through his dream it guided Constantine to bring
about what had to happen. What is important is the actuality of the Christ and His teal
and visibly active power. Only in the science of the spirit do we begin to understand what
the Christ impulse is.

Another historical event was the struggle between France and England. It changed the
map of Europe in such a way that we can say that if France had not been victorious over
England, all conditions and relationships would have become different. But how did this
victory happen? It happened because the Christ impulse has worked itself into the
subconscious of the soul up to the present time, when it is increasingly becoming a
conscious force. So we can see in the evolution of the Western spirit how the Christ
impulse seeks our in the souls of men those conditions by which it can become effective
in some individuals. Legends have preserved for us the manner in which the Christ
impulse can assert itself within the Western spiritual tradition. In part, these legends refer
generally to ancient pagan ages, but they take us back to those heathen times in which an
understanding of Christianity was beginning to germinate.

If the soul does not consciously seek initiation as delineated in Knowledge of the Higher
Worlds and Its Attainment, but becomes saturated with the Christ impulse as if by way of
natural initiation, then the most favorable period for this process is from December 25 to
January 6. We can understand this clearly by realizing that for occult knowledge it is
evident that the earth is not only what geologists describe. Geologists conceive the earth's
components as being similar to the skeleton of man. Yet the spiritual also belongs to our
earth whose aura has been permeated by Christ. During the day's twenty-four hours, this
earth sleeps and is awake just as we are. We must familiarize ourselves with the fact that
the state of wakefulness on earth occurs during the winter, and the state of sleep during
the summer. The earth spirit is most awake in these twelve or thirteen days from
Christmas to the Epiphany. In ancient ages when, as you know from the various
presentations in my lecture series, human beings elevated themselves to a sort of
dreamlike clairvoyance to reach a spiritual understanding of the world, in those ages the

most favorable tints for this process was summer. Thus, it is quite natural that whoever
wants to elevate himself to spiritual heights by means of a more dreamlike clairvoyance
will have an easier time of it during the summer, when the earth is asleep. Therefore, St.
John's midsummer-day was in ancient ages the most propitious time to raise the soul to
the spiritual level. The old way of spiritual interaction with the earth has been replaced by
a more conscious elevation that can best be reached during the earth's wakefulness.
For this reason, legends inform us that unusually endowed people, who are particularly
suited by their karmas, pass into an extraordinary state of consciousness that resembles
sleep, but only on the surface, its inner quality is such that it can be inspired by those
forces that elevate human beings to the domain we call the spirit world. A beautiful
Norwegian legend (see Note 2) tells us that Olaf Asteson, in church on Christmas Eve,
falls into a sleeplike state and when he awakens on January 6 is able to relate the
experiences he had in this condition. This Norwegian legend does in fact describe the
experiences that one perceives first as the soul world - and then as something that feels
like the spirit world, but with everything being expressed as images, as imaginative
forms.

This time of year has been most favorable in those epochs when human beings were not
as advanced as they are in our time. Now it is no longer possible for the Christ impulse to
penetrate the souls of men in this way, as if by natural initiation. Nowadays man must
make a conscious effort and climb to initiation in a way similar to that achieved through
the instructions given in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. We are living in an
age when natural initiations are becoming increasingly rare and will eventually disappear.
Yet one initiation that could still essentially be called a natural initiation took place when
the Christ impulse worked itself into the soul of the simple country girl, The Maid of
Orleans. It was she who caused the victory of the French over the English. Again, not the
human mind nor the talents of military leaders were decisive factors in changing the map
of Europe so magnificently, but rather the Christ impulse working itself into the
subconscious of the Maid of Orleans and inspiring her to radiate its presence in all of
history.

We would now have to examine whether something similar could have occurred in the
Maid of Orleans by way of natural initiation and ask whether her soul was inspired in the
nights from the 25th day of December to the 6th of January. From her biography it seems
difficult to demonstrate that she was even once in a sleep-like state during the twelve or
thirteen special days when the Christ impulse could have entered her soul, inspiring her
to act as its human shell on the battle grounds of France. Yet, that is precisely what
happened. There is a time when the karma of a particular individual can facilitate such a
sleep-like state in a human being. During the last few days prior to a person's birth he
lives in the mother's womb in a dreaming, sleep-like state. He has not yet perceived with
his senses what is happening in the world outside. If by virtue of his karma a person were
especially suited to receive the Christ impulse during these last few days in the womb,
then these days could also be days of natural initiation. Strengthened by and saturated
with the Christ impulse, such a person would have to be born on the sixth day of January.
Joan of Arc was born on that day. It is her special mystery that she was horn on the 6th
day of January and had spent the time from Christmas to the day of Epiphany in a
peculiar sleep-like state in the womb of her mother where she received her natural
initiation. Now consider the profound connections beyond the external developments that
we are accustomed to call history. As a rule, the external events that are reconstructed
from historical documents are of the least significance. What is of decisive historical
significance is the plain date in our calendar indicating that Joan of Are was sent into this
world on the 6th day of January. Thus, supernatural forces become active in the sentient
world and we must read the occult signs that present this fact to us. They tell us that the
Christ impulse had already streamed into the Maid of Orleans before her physical birth,
as if by way of natural initiation.

I want to explain these facts in order to instill in your souls a feeling for the fact that the
external preception must take into account unknown forces and connections beyond what
we ordinarily call history. European history has been guided by the Christ impulse since
the Mystery of Golgotha, whereas Asia retained a world view that is not vet fully
sensitive to the Christ impulse. To be sure, Europeans have been led into considering the
wisdom of India as something especially profound. Not only is it characteristic of Hindu

thought, if not of all Asian religious perception, however, that its entire attention is
directed to the time preceding the appearance of the Christ impulse, but also that the state
of religious perception is preserved as it was in those days. If something remains behind
in the evolutionary process it can be interpreted to have absorbed something luciferic, and
for this reason Asian religious evolution is the carrier of a luciferic element. A glance at
the religious development of Asia will inform us that it contains much of what mankind
as a whole once possessed but was later forced to abandon. We must in pan cleanse
Western culture of the luciferic remnants and in part we must elevate them in such a way
that the Christ impulse can enter.

Moving from Asia to the East of Europe, we notice how Russian orthodox Christianity
has remained stationary at an earlier stage of Christian development, refusing to advance
and thereby keeping something of the luciferic element. In short, we can detect a luciferic
remnant in the East, which, I would say, a wise guiding force left behind for the evolution
of mankind in general.

Looking to the West and especially to American culture, a different characteristic quality
stands out. The characteristic feature of American culture is to explain everything from
external appearance. This kind of perception can certainly lead to great and significant
achievements, but still, externals are usually expected to provide answers to all questions.
Suppose we in Europe, and especially in Central Europe, notice a person who earlier in
his life did not yet have an opportunity to dedicate himself to Christ and to the spiritual
cosmic forces. If some event in this person's life brought about his conversion, we want
to know what had gone on in his soul. We are not interested in learning that there was a
leap forward in his development because such a phenomenon could certainly be found
everywhere. The most incorrect pronouncement made by the empirical sciences is that
nature does not make any leaps (see Note 3). Yet there is a tremendous leap from a green
plant leaf to the red petal of a flower, and there is another significant leap from petal to
the calyx. This pronouncement is therefore patently false; the truth of all development
rests precisely on the fact that leaps occur everywhere. Hence, when a person who for
some time was leading an external existence is suddenly induced by something to turn to

spiritual things, we are not interested in the fact that it happened. What does interest us is
the inner force and power that can bring about such a conversion. We will want to look
into the soul of such a person and ascertain what has caused such a reversal. The inner
workings of the soul will interest us.

How would the American proceed? He would do something quite peculiar. In America,
conversions of this sort have been observed frequently. Well, the American would ask the
people who have experienced conversions to write letters. He would then gather all these
letters into a bundle and say, "I have received these letters from some two hundred
people. Fourteen percent of all these souls experienced a conversion out of sudden fear of
death or hell: five percent claimed altruistic motives; seventeen percent because they
aspired to ethical ideals; fifteen percent had experienced pangs of conscience; ten percent
acted in obedience to what they were taught; thirteen percent because they saw that others
were converted and imitated them; nineteen percent because they were forced by a good
whipping at the appropriate age, and so on." In this fashion the most extreme souls are
isolated, sorted and tallied and the result is claimed to be founded on "scientific data."
The findings are then compiled in books that are sent out and billed as "soul science." For
these people all other evidence is unsound, or as they claim, rests on subjective notions.
There you have an example of the externalization of the innermost phenomena, and so it
goes with many, many things in America. At a time that cries out for special spiritual
deepening, the mat external brand of spiritism is rampant in America! Everything there
has to be tangible.

That is a materialistic interpretation of spiritual life. We could mention many other
instances from which it would be possible to see how the culture of the West is seized by
the ahrimanic principle, and what principle causes the pendulum to swing to the other
side. In the East we are confronted by the luciferic and in the West by the ahrimanic
principle. In Central Europe we have been assigned the immensely important task of
finding the equilibrium between East and West. Therefore, the plastic group in our
building in Dornach must represent what we consider the most significant spiritual task
of our age, that is, finding the equilibrant relationship between Lucifer and Ahriman.

Only then will it be recognized how the Christ impulse was meant to influence evolution
on earth, when the Christ is not simply brought to preeminence, but is known in the
proper way as exemplary force in balance with Lucifer and Ahriman.

The following may illustrate that no clear understanding has vet been reached concerning
the relationship of man and of Christ to Lucifer and Ahriman. In a period, even the
greatest phenomena are not always free from a one-sided attitude that may characterize
the age. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of Michelangelo's magnificent
painting The Last Judgment, which can be found in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Christ is
portrayed in triumph, directing the good people to the one side and the wicked to the
other. Let us look at this Christ figure. It does not possess the features we would like to
emphasize in the Christ of our building in Dornach. Even though Lucifer towers above, it
must be shown that the Christ raises His hand in compassion. Lucifer is not supposed to
be toppled by the power of Christ, but plunges down by his own power because he is
unable to bear the radiance of the Christ nearby, and the Christ looks up and raises his
brow toward Lucifer. Similarly, Ahriman is not conquered by any hatred from Christ, but
because he feels he cannot stand the forces emanating from Him. The Christ, however,
towers in the middle as the One who is carrying the Parcival principle into the new age
and who, not through His power but through His very being, induces others to overcome
themselves, rather than being overcome by Him. In Michelangelo's painting, we see a
Christ who uses His very power to send some to heaven and others to hell. In future, such
an image will no longer be seen as the genuine Christ, but rather as a Christ having
luciferic qualities. Of course, this observation does not detract from the greatness of the
painting, in fact, we acknowledge it. We simply must admit, however, that Michelangelo
was not yet capable of painting the genuine Christ because the development of the world
had not yet advanced to such a point when this could be done. There has to be a clear
understanding that we cannot turn our attention just to the Christ, but must set our sight
on the threefold configuration: Christ, Lucifer, Ahriman. I can only hint at this, but
spiritual science will eventually bring to light the full content of the mystery, Christ in
relation to Lucifer and Ahriman.

Now consider the following. Looking eastward we can make out luciferic forces even in
the eastern regions nearest to us, while in the West we see ahrimanic forces. As a matter
of fact, in spiritual scientific consideration we must adopt a mode of perception by which
neither objects nor nations, nor the spirit of nations, are observed with sympathy or
antipathy, but rather in accordance with their characteristics. What is called the national
mentality of a person steeped in the heritage of his people depends to a large degree on
the activity of the physical body and the ether body. From the time of our falling asleep to
the moment of our awakening we live with our spiritual-intellectual being as astral body
and ego, and during this period we also live outside our habitual national identity. Only
during the time from our awakening to the time when we fall asleep do we partake in our
nationality, because then we are immersed in our physical body. For this reason man
overcomes his sense of national identity little by little during his stay in kamaloka. There
he strives toward a union with humanity as a whole in order to live most of the time
between death and rebirth in the sphere of humanity as such. Among the characteristics
discarded in kamaloka is one that specializes us as members of a nationality.

In this connection the various nationalities differ considerably from one another. Let us,
for instance, compare a Frenchman with a Russian. It is a Frenchman's particular trait that
he is especially persistent in holding onto, and dwelling in, what the collective soul of his
people carries into his physical body and ether body during his life between birth and
death. This can be seen in his definitive idea - not as an individual but as a Frenchman -
of what it is to be French. Above all, he stresses the importance of being French and what
that means to him. But this notion held by Frenchmen or by anyone else from a Romance
culture about their nationality affects the ether body by clearly imprinting the idea of
nationality on it. A few days after the Frenchman has passed through the gate of death he
loses his ether body; it is then a closed entity that has a prolonged existence in the etheric
world. The ether body is unable to dissolve for a long time because it is impregnated
with, and held together by, the Frenchman's idea of nationality. Thus, if we look to the
West we see the field of death filled with firmly defined ether bodies.

Now, if we take a closer look to the East, at Russian man, we recognize his peculiar trait;

his soul, upon passing through the gate of death, carries an ether body that dissolves in a
relatively short period of time. That is the difference between the West and the East.
When the ether bodies of Western Europeans are separated after death, they tend to
maintain a certain rigidity. What the Frenchman calls "Gloire" is impregnated in his ether
body as a national Gloire. He is condemned for a long time after his death to turn his
spiritual sight onto this ether body, and to look at himself (The Russian, however, looks
little at himself after his death.) Through all this, Western European man is exposed to
the ahrimanic influence because his ether body has been infected by materialistic
thinking.

The speedy separation and the diffusion of the ether body is accompanied by a feeling of
sensual pleasure, which is also present as a most peculiar ingredient of national
sentiment. How is this expressed in the East (Central Europeans do not understand this
just as they do not empathize with the East.) Consider Dostoevsky and even Tolstoy or
those leading writers who are constantly speaking of "Russian man"; their jargon is an
expression of an undefined sensual pleasure surging from their national sentiment. Even
in Solowjow's philosophy, we find a vague and stifling quality that the Central European
man cannot reconcile with the clarity and purity he seeks. This search for clarity and
purity is related to what is active in Europe as spiritual power.

In Central Europe there exists another condition, an intermediate state and something I
can now dwell on in greater detail than was possible in yesterday's lecture. I mentioned
that something exists in Central Europe that could be called the inner disposition toward
striving. As a Central European, Goethe could have written his Faust no differently in the
eighteen-forties: he was always striving! This striving is innermost nature. It was in
Central Europe where the mystics made their appearance - those mystics who were not
satisfied with the mere knowledge of the divine- spiritual principle but wanted to
experience it in their own souls. To experience the Christ event internally was their very
endeavor. Now take Solowjow who proceeds above all from a historical premise that the
Christ died for mankind. That is correct, but Solowjow is a soul who, similar to a cloud,
perceives spiritual life as something outside himself. Somehow he thinks that everything

is viewed as a completed event, while Central European man demands that everyone
experience the Christ event again in himself. Solowjow stresses time and again that
Christ has to die so that man can be human. Meister Eckhart, in contrast, would have
responded like this: "You are seeing Christ in the same way in which one looks at
something external." The point is that we should not look only at historical events, but
that we should experience the Christ within ourselves. We must discover something
within ourselves that passes through stages similar to those experienced by Christ, at least
spiritually, so that we can rediscover the Christ event within ourselves.

Now it will certainly seem strange and fantastic when mankind nowadays is told that in
Central Europe the close association of the "I" with the Christ principle had put a stamp
on the entire development of the area, to the effect that even the linguistic spirit of a
people took up this association and equated "I" (Ich) and "CH" (Christ): I-CH conjoined
became "Ich." In pronouncing "Ich" in Central Europe one utters the name of Jesus
Christ. That is how close the "I" wants to be to the Christ, longing for the most intimate
closeness with Him. This living together, as one, with the spiritual world, which we in
Central Europe must strive to attain in all intellectual fields, is not known in the West or
in the East. Therefore, something in the twentieth century is necessary so that the Christ
principle can gradually spread over the entire European continent. I have frequently
emphasized in several lecture series (see Note 4) that in November 1879 the spiritual
being we call the Archangel Michael had reached a special stage of development.
Michael had become, so to speak, the leading spirit who is now preparing the event that
has to take place in the twentieth century. This is alluded to in my first mystery play (see
Note 5) as the appearance of the etheric Christ on earth. It will come to pass that at first a
few, and gradually more and more souls will know that the Christ is really here, is again
on this earth, but as an ether body and not as a physical body.

Certain preparations are necessary. When some souls in the course of the twentieth
century become clairvoyant to life in the etheric world - and that will happen - they
would be disturbed by those ether bodies that are residual from Western Europe. The
spiritual eye would perceive them first of all and would have a distorted vision of the

Christ figure. For this reason Michael has to fight a battle in Europe. He has to contribute
something to the diffusion of these rigid ether bodies from Western Europe. To
accomplish this task, he must take the ether bodies from the East, which strive for
diffusion, and join with them in a struggle against the West. The result of this is that since
1879 a violent struggle has been in preparation between Russian and Western European
ether bodies and is now raging in the entire astral world. This furious battle between
Russia and France is indeed going on in the astral world and is led by Michael; it
corresponds to the war that is now being waged in Europe. We are often shaken by the
knowledge that the events in the physical world take place as exact opposites to those
occurring in the spiritual world, and that is precisely what is happening in this case. The
alliance between France and Russia (see Note 6) can be blamed on the seductive powers
of Ahriman or, if you will, on the ahrimanic element, the twenty billion francs that France
gave to Russia. This alliance is the physical expression of a struggle raging between
French and Russian souls, a struggle that has an impact on Central Europe as it strives in
its innermost soul for an encounter with the Christ. It is the karma of Europe that we in
Central Europe must experience ill an especially tragic way what the West and East must
settle between themselves. The only possible interpretation of the external struggle
between German and French elements is that the German element lies in the middle and
serves as an anvil for both East and West. Germany, which is hammered by both sides in
the conflict, is in reality the subject of their own controversy. That is the spiritual truth
and quite different from what is happening in the physical world. Consider how different
the spiritual truth is from what is happening in the physical world! This must strike
contemporary man as grotesque, but it nevertheless is the truth, which must have a
shocking effect on us.

There is yet another extraordinarily important matter worth mentioning. Surely history
seems to be contradicted when we see that England, even though she has in the past
always been allied with Turkey against Russia, now has to fight with Russia against
Turkey. We can understand this contradiction only through occult observation. On the
physical plane England and Russia are allies in the fight against the Turkish element, yet
occult vision, perceiving this struggle from below through the physical plane and then

onto the astral plane, sees that in the North it is Russia and in the Southeast it is Turkey
that appear to be allied with England. This is due to the fact that the alliance between
England and Russia is only of significance on the physical plane, but has no
corresponding value in the spiritual world since it rests entirely on material interests.
From below one sees that England and Russia are allied in the North only on the physical
plane. In the Southeast, looking through the physical plane, one perceives on the astral
plane a spiritual alliance between the English and the Turks while they are both fighting
the Russians. Thus, on the physical plane, England is an ally to Russia and on the astral
plane Russia is attacked by England. This is how we must see the events as they unfold in
external reality inasmuch as they reveal themselves as external history. What is behind
this history is something entirely different.

There will be a time when people will speak about the present events differently than
they are doing now. You will have to admit, the entire war literature contains something
rather unpleasant. True, some valid statements are made, but there are also many
disagreeable ones. Above all, there is one thing that is disagreeable. There is much talk
about how it is still too early to discuss the question of who has caused the war and so on.
People delude themselves about the facts when they say that at a later date the documents
in our archives will surely bring to light who is to blame for the war! In reference to the
external events, however, the matter can be resolved fairly easily, provided one judges
dispassionately. Chamberlain, in his War Essays (see Note 7) is correct (even though he
is in error about the details) when he says that it is possible to know the key issues of this
war. All that is without a doubt accurate, but it leaves the proper question unasked. For
example, there is but one question that can be answered unequivocally, if only it is
properly posed, and this question is: Who could have prevented the war? - The constantly
recurring question: Who is to blame for this war? and many other questions just are not
appropriate. Who could have prevented the war? The answer to this question can be no
other than that the Russian government could have prevented the war! Only in this
fashion will it be possible to find the appropriate definition for the impulses that are at
work in each situation. Of course, war had been desired by the East for decades, but had
it not been for a certain relationship between England, Russia and France, it could not

have broken out. Therefore, one might ascribe the greater blame to England. Yet all these
conjectures do not take into consideration the underlying causes that made this World
War a necessity. It is naive to believe that war could have been avoided. People these
days talk as if it did not have to come about when it was, of course, destined by the
European karma.

I wanted to allude to some of this by sketching the spiritual differences between East and
West. It is not important that we look for external causes. All we have to know is that this
war was a historic necessity. When that is understood the individual causes do not matter.
What is important is the proper attitude toward the various effects, for one effect can
impress our souls in an especially significant way. It is remarkable and a characteristic
phenomenon that a war like this one produces many unexpended ether bodies, Since this
is the biggest war in man's conscious history, this phenomenon is present to a
corresponding large degree. Ether bodies are produced that are not worn out. You see, the
ether body that man carries with him can support him for a long period of time, until he
reaches seventy, eighty or ninety years of age. But in a war human beings are sacrificed
in the prime of their lives. You know that man, when he passes through the gate of death
loses his ether body after a short period of time. A person dying in a war, however, loses
his ether body when normally it could have supported his physical body for a long time,
in many cases for decades. Those ether bodies entering the etheric world prematurely are
preserved with all their powers. Consider now the countless number of unexpended ether
bodies of those going through the gate of death at an early age. There is something
distinctive about these ether bodies. I would like to illustrate this fact with an example
that concerns our Movement, and after that I wish to explain how the ether bodies of the
young soldiers who have gone through the gate of death will emerge in the etheric world
in the near future.

This fall we witnessed in Dornach the death of little seven-year-old Theodor Faiss; his
family belonged to the Anthroposophical Society and was employed not far from our
building project, The father used to live in Stuttgart before moving to Dornach. He
worked as a gardener in the vicinity of the building and lived there with his family. He

himself had been drafted soon after the beginning of the war and at the time of the event I
would like to relate, he was staying in a military hospital. Little seven-year-old Theodor
was really a sunny child - a wonderful, lovely boy. Now, one day the following
happened. We just had a lecture that I delivered in Dornach about the work that goes on
in the building. After the lecture someone appeared and reported that little Theodor's
mother had not seen him since late in the afternoon. It was ten o'clock at night and we
could not help thinking that a terrible accident had happened. This afternoon a horse-
driven furniture van had been in the vicinity of the so-called canteen; it was seen on a
narrow street where it was forced to turn. To my knowledge, no van as huge had reached
that spot in decades. Little Theodor had been in the canteen before the van had turned. He
had been delayed there, otherwise he would have gone home earlier with the food that he
had fetched from the canteen for supper. It so happened that he covered the short distance
to his home in such a way that he reached the very spot where at that moment the van
turned over and fell on him. Nobody had noticed the accident, not even the coachman
because he was tending to his horses when the van turned over and did not know that the
child was buried under it. When we were informed that the child was missing we tried to
heave the vehicle up again. Friends fetched tools and alerted Swiss soldiers to help us
with the task. Naturally the child had been dead since five-thirty in the afternoon. The
van had crushed him immediately and he had died of suffocation.

This case can be used as an example of what I have often tried to explain by means of a
comparison: causes are mistaken for effects, and vice versa. I have frequently used the
following example. A person falls into the river and people hurry to the spot where it
happened. When they find a rock, they conjecture that the victim had stumbled over it
and this caused him to fall into the river and drown. Thus, they are sure that the man had
died because he fell into the river. If one were to conduct an autopsy, however, it might
turn out that he had suffered a heart attack and as a result, was already dead when he fell
into the water, but he fell into the water because he had died. You will frequently
encounter a similar confusion of cause and effect when life situations are assessed, and
even more frequently in the general sciences.

The situation with little Theodor was that his karma had expired, so that it is actually
possible to say, "He himself ordered the van to the place of the accident." I have told you
this externally tragic case in detail because we are here concerned with a child's ether
body, which could have supported his life for decades. This ether body has passed into
the spiritual world with all of its unexpended powers, but where is it? What is it doing?
Since that day, anyone attuned to occult perception who is working artistically on the
building in Dornach or is there simply to pursue his thoughts will know that the entire
ether body of the child, with all its powers, is enlarged in the aura of the Dornach
building. We must distinguish that the individuality is elsewhere; it goes its own way, but
the ether body was separated after a few days and is now present in the building. I will
never hesitate to assert that the powers needed for intuition are those of this ether body
that was sacrificed for the building. The relationships behind ordinary life are often quite
different from what rue are able to suspect. This ether body has become one of the
protective forces of the building. Something tremendously stupendous lies in such a
relationship.

Now let us consider the vast amount of power that ascends to the spiritual world from the
unexpended ether bodies of these who are now walling through the gate of death as a
result of military events.

The way in which events are connected is different from what people can imagine; the
karma in the world takes its course in a different way. It is the task of spiritual science to
replace fantastic notions with spiritually true ideas. For example, we can hardly imagine
something more fantastic and untrue, from a spiritual perspective, than what has taken
place in the last few decades. Let us ask what has been accomplished by the (Hague)
Peace Conference (see Note 8) which aimed at replacing war with law, or international
law, as it was called. Since the Peace Conferences were held, wars have never been more
terrible. During the last few decades this Peace Movement counted among its special
patrons the very monarch who has waged the bloodiest and most cruel wars ever known
in history. The launching of the Peace Conferences by the Russian Czar must therefore be
considered the biggest farce in world history; it is also the most abominable. This must be

labeled a luciferic seduction of the East; the details can be easily traced. No matter how
one may view the situation, the human soul is shocked by the fact that in the beginning,
when the war impulses made their way into Central Europe, the people there made few
comments about the situation, even in places where they gathered for the purpose of
discussion, such as the German Parliament in Berlin. Little was said, but the events spoke
for themselves. In contrast, there was much talk in the East and West. The most shocking
impressions come from the debates among various political parties in the St. Petersburg
Duma. Representatives of these parties uttered, with great fervor, endless variations of
absolutely meaningless phrases. It was terrifying to see the luciferic seduction at work.
The fires raging in this war, however, are intended to warn and admonish the human race
to be on guard.

From what is now happening, a few souls must come to a realization that we cannot go
on like this; human evolution must take up the spiritual! Materialism is confronting its
karma in this, the most terrible of all wars. In a certain sense, this war is the karma of
materialism. The more this fact is realized by human beings, the more they will abandon
their arguments about who is to blame for the war, and then they will have to realize that
this war has been sent into world history to admonish man to turn to a spiritual perception
of human life in its entirety.

Not only does materialism cause human souls to embrace materialism, it also perverts
man's logic and dulls his feelings. We in Central Europe are still lading a full
understanding of what I have stated before. We in Central Europe must be most
intimately engaged in the continued development of the Christ impulse. To do this we
must, among other things, try to understand the minds that have already sown the seeds.
Just one example. Goethe wrote a theory of color, which physicists regard as something -
well - something that deserves no more than an indulgent smile, as if they wanted to say,
'What did the poet know about colors? He was nothing but a dilettante." Since the 1880's
I have tried to gain acceptance for Goethe's theory of color in spite of the findings of
modern physics (see Note 9). Why does nobody understand that? The answer is that
Central Europe has been imbued with the materialistic principle that has come to us from

the British folk soul. Newton, whom Goethe had to oppose, has been victorious over
everything emanating from Goethe's spirit. Goethe also established a theory of evolution
that demonstrates how human beings, simply by grasping spiritual laws, can progress
from the state of greatest imperfection to one of greatest perfection. People found this too
difficult to understand. When Darwin published his theory of evolution in a more
comprehensible fashion, it was readily accepted. Darwin, a materialistic thinker who was
inspired by the British folk soul has conquered Goethe, a man whose perceptions resulted
from a most intimate dialogue with the German folk soul.

Ernst Haeckel's experiences were tragic. During his entire life he nourished himself
intellectually by leaning on the ideas of Huxley and Darwin; his materialism is basically
an English product (see Note 10) Yet when the war broke out, Haeckel was enraged
about what emerged from the British Isles. He was one of the first to return British
medals, diplomas and honors; instead, he should have returned his brand of Darwinism
and physics, which is tinged with English thought. This is what we have to realize if we
are to understand how Central Europe can strive far an intimate harmony with the laws of
the world.

The greatest damage is done when what is poured into a child's soul induces the child to
develop merely materialistically later in life. This trend has been on the increase for
several centuries. Ahriman has even inspired one of the great British writers to compose a
work that is calculated to impress the child's soul materialistically. The intent is hardly
noticeable because ordinarily, one does not see all this as preparatory to a materialistic
orientation. The work I am talking about is Robinson Crusoe. The description of
Robinson is so shrewd that once the mind has accepted the ideas in the Robinson tale, it
cannot avoid thinking materialistically thereafter. Mankind has not yet recovered from
the ill effects perpetrated by the inventors of Robinson tales; they existed before and exist
now. Much more could be said. These statements are not made to say something
derogatory about the people of the West who have to be what they are. Rather, I wish to
point out how the people in Central Europe must discover the connections to great values
that are just now germinating but will grow to determine future developments. In this

regard, the significance of Austria is especially noteworthy. During the past few decades
several men there aspired to profound accomplishments, for example, Hamerling in the
area of literature, Carneri who set out to deepen Darwinism, by extending it to the moral
realm, as well as Bruckner and other artists from a variety of disciplines. What matters
here is the concern of a people for these things.

Now let us consider the unexpended ether bodies that are still in existence. They were
cast off by human beings who had learned, through a great event, how to sacrifice
themselves for their people's spiritual commonalty, a commonalty no longer present for
them, at least on the surface. If a spiritual scientist today asserts that there is a collective
soul of people and that it exists as archangel and so forth, he will be ridiculed. What is
called a people's collective soul by the materialists is nothing but the abstract sum of
attributes that the people of a nation possess. The materialist considers the people as
nothing but the sum of human beings who co-exist in the same geographic area and share
a sense of commonalty with each other. We, on the other hand, speak of a people's
spiritual commonalty in such a way that we know that the spirit of a people is present as a
real being of the rank of an archangel. Even though somebody who sacrifices his life for
his people is not fully conscious of the real spirit of his people, he nevertheless confirms
by the manner in which he goes through death that he believes in a continuity of life alter
this death. He believes that there is more to a people's spiritual commonalty than meets
the eye, that is, it is related to, and co-exists with, the supersensible world. All those
going through death confirm in a more or less conscious way that there is a super-
sensible world, and that realization is imprinted on their ether bodies. In a future time of
peace, the unexpended ether bodies will be among people living on earth and will
continually send the following sounds into the music of the spheres: there is more in the
world than what mere physical eyes can perceive! This spiritual truth will ring forth as
part of the music of the spheres through ether bodies that the dead have left behind. These
are aside from what they are taking along as their individuality, which they retain during
their lives between death and rebirth. We must listen to what lives and echoes from these
ether bodies, because they were discarded by people who went through death and in so
doing, affirmed the truth of the spiritual world. Mankind's greatest sin will be to ignore

what the dead call out to us when their ether bodies speak. One's glance at the spiritual
world will be infinitely enriched if one considers that those who have lost loved ones -
fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters - may tell themselves that
those who were sacrificed continue to live for humanity, as a reminder of what is yet to
come!

If one were to rely only on what is taking place in the physical world, there would be
little hope for the successful continuation of the spiritual movement through which a
spiritual scientific world view is to be cultivated. Recently, a good and faithful colleague
aged thirty or so died. My words to this soul that had gone through the gate of death
requested that it should continue to work in our spiritual scientific field as faithfully and
as courageously as it had done here on earth, utilizing all of its acquired knowledge. This
colleague had worked diligently with us here on the physical plane; my message to him
for his life between death and rebirth was that he should continue to work with us after
death as he had done in life, for we are counting on these so-called dead as we are
counting on the living. Our spiritual- scientific world view must be alive to such a degree
that the gap between the so-called dead and the living can be overcome: we must feel the
dead among us as if they were alive. We want not only theory, but life. Thus we wish to
point out that when there is peace, there will be a living tie between those on earth and
those who have gone through the gate of death. Man will be able to learn, and must learn,
from the dead how they contribute to the great spiritual progress that must take hold on
earth.

Sometimes life offers us an opportunity to see how human logic alone does not suffice. I
would like to mention an example - not for personal reasons but because I want to
characterize the way our Movement is viewed by the public. A few years ago an article
was printed in a respected South German journal (see Note 14) by a famous
contemporary philosopher about our spiritual science. This treatment of spiritual science
was intended to impress the public purely because the essay was authored by a famous
philosopher. The editor took great pride in the fact that he was able to present an article
about spiritual science by such a famous man. Of course, everything was skewed and the

facts about spiritual science were distorted. But what did it take for the editor to realize
that the account about spiritual science that he had sponsored in his monthly journal was
distorted? The war broke out and the author of the article sent several letters to the editor.
These letters contained some of the most disgusting remarks about Central European
culture that one could imagine. The professor had railed and sneered at it. The editor then
printed these letters in his journal as examples of the stupidity of this kind of thinking,
commenting that anyone who writes this way belongs in an insane asylum. We are
confronted by a curious fact. A good editor needed such an experience in order to see that
the author, whose article on spiritual science had severely damaged the public image of
the Movement, belonged in an insane asylum. If the man belongs in an insane asylum
now, however, then the same was true before, when he wrote the article on spiritual
science!

So it goes in the world! To be a judge of what is going on, man must garner other
supports than those ordinarily available to him. The spiritual scientist who can clearly
demonstrate that truth finds its own way, is on firm ground. Spiritual science, however,
must be active in the evolution of mankind so that what is necessary, happens. Early in
history Emperor Constantine had to accomplish his mission so that the Christ impulse
could bear on the subconscious from the spiritual world. Later, the Christ impulse
became active in the Maid of Orleans; what had to happen did indeed take place. Today,
the Christ impulse must continue to bear on man, but more on his consciousness. In the
future, there must be souls who will know that up there in the spiritual world there are
those who sacrificed themselves as individuals and who admonish us to emulate their
own belief in the active force of the spiritual, which they attained in death. The forces in
the unexpended ether bodies beckon to the future, as well: to understand their message is
to admit it into one's soul. Below, however, there must be souls who will perceive this
truth and prepare for it through the proper and active understanding of our spiritual
science. Our spiritual science must cultivate souls on this earth who will be capable of
sensing what the ether bodies of the dead up there will say to us in the future. These souls
will know that in the beyond there are forces to admonish human beings who had to be
left on earth. When spirit-conscious souls down here harken to the hidden sounds of the

spiritual world, then all bloodshed, all sacrifices and all suffering, past and future, will
bear fruit. I do hope that quite a few souls come together through spiritual science and
perceive the voices from the spiritual world that are resounding especially because of this
war. Summarizing the final words of today's reflection, I wish to say a few words to you
that are merely an expression of my feeling for what I want to instill in your souls.

From the warrior's valor,From the blood of battles, From the pain of the
bereaved. From a people's sacrificeWill the spirit fruit arise -Will the souls
embrace the spiritConsciously, with inner eyes.

With such feelings in our hearts we forever want to imbue ourselves with the meaning of
the rose cross so that we can perceive it in the proper way as the motto for our doing,
weaving and feeling. Not the black cross alone. He who tears the roses from the black
cross and has nothing left but the black cross, would fall into the clutches of Ahriman.
The black cross in itself represents life when it strives to embrace inanimate matter. Also,
if one were to separate the cross from the roses, keeping only the latter, one would nor
find the proper thing. For the roses, separate from the cross, tend to elevate us to a life of
selfish striving toward the spiritual, but not to a life in which we reveal the spirit in a
material world. Not the cross alone, not the roses alone, but the roses on the cross, the
cross carrying the roses: That is our proper symbol.

NOTES

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: The footnotes below are translations of the annotations
appended to the original publication of this lecture. Titles of books and articles are
given in their German form; they are followed by free translations in parentheses
which do not necessarily refer to an English translation.

"Die ubersinnliche Erkenntnis und ihre starkende Seelenkraft in unserer
schicksalstragenden Zeit" ("Supersensible Perception and Its
Strengthening Soul-force in Our Time of Destiny"). Corresponding

remarks can be found in the Berlin lectures of April 16 and 23, 1915,
published as: "Aus schicksalstragenden Zeit", ("From a Time of Destiny")
Bibl.-No. 64 in the Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works [of Rudolf Steiner]),
Dornach, 1959.

o

"Welten-Neujahr. Das Traumlied von Olaf Asteson" ("Cosmic New Year.
The Legend of Olaf Asteson's Dream"), Hanover lecture of January 1,
1912. Published as a separate edition in Dornach, 1958; Gesamtausgabe
(Complete works), Bibl.-No 158. In this form the pronouncement was first
made by Karl von Linne in his Philosophia Botanica, Stockholm, 1751,
no. 77.

Cf. especially "Die spirituellen Hintergriinde der ausseren Welt - Der Sturz
der Geister der Finsternis" ("The Spiritual Background of the External
World - The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness"), 14 lectures, Dornach,
September 29 to October 28, 1917. Gesamtausgabe (Complete works),
Bibl.-No. 177, Dornach, 1965.

"Die Pforte der Einweihung" ("The Portal of Initiation"), first scene.
Gesamtausgabe (Complete works), Bibl.-No 14, Dornach, 1962.
The alliance was negotiated in 1897 by President Faure of France and
Czar Nicolas II of Russia.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Neue Kriegsaufsatze (New War Essays),
Munich, 1915, p.36. "The reference is to the Hague Peace Conference of
1899 and 1907, which were both initiated by Czar Nicholas II.
Rudolf Steiner was asked in 1882 to edit Goethe's scientific writings in
Kiirschner's Deutsche National-Literatur. Volume I was published in
1883; it contained writings on the formation and transformation of
organisms. Rudolf Steiner's introductions and critical commentaries to the
four volumes were published as a special edition, entitled: Rudolf Steiner,

Goethe's Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften (Goethe's Natural-Scientific
Writings), Dornach, 1926. A German edition was published in Freiburg,
1949. Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Bibl.-No. 1. Cf. the
correspondence between Kurl Julius Schroer, Joseph Kiirschner and
Rudolf Steiner in Blatter fur Anthroposophie,. 13 Jg. No. 2, February
1961.

Ernst Haeckel: "I have always readily acknowledged the magnificent
contributions of the small insular British empire to the enrichment of
human civilization. These were possible because of its advantageous
insular position and its geographic alliances. In addition I worked on
Darwinism for the past fifty years and had many personal dealings with
Darwin, Huxley, Lyell, John Murray and many other famous natural
scientists in England and Scotland; these were pleasant and fruitful
personal relationships." Haeckel, Ewigkeit. Weltkriegsgedanken iiber
Leben und Tod, Religion und Entwicklungslehre (Eternity, World War
Reflections on Life and Death, Religion, and the Theory of Evolution),
Berlin, 1915, p.65 and 114.

Robert Hamerling, 1830-1889. Cf. Rudolf Steiner, Gesammelte Aufsdtze
zurLiteratur 1886-1902 (Collected Essays on Literature, 1886-1902),
Bibl.No. 20, Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Dornach, 1957; Mein
Lebensgang (The Course of My Life), Bibl.-No. 28, Gesamtausgabe
(Complete Works), Dornach, 1962; "Robert Hamerling, ein Dichter und
ein Denker und ein Mensch" ("Robert Hamerling, the Poet, the Thinker
and the Man"), Dornach, 1939.

Bartholomaus Ritter von Carneri, 1821-1909. Cf. Rudolf Steiner, "Carneri,
der Ethiker des Darwinismus" in Methodische Grundlagen der
Anthroposophie 1884-1901 ("Carneri, the Moral Philosopher of
Darwinism" in Methodological Foundations of Anthroposophy, 1884-

1901), Bibl.-No. 30, Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Dornach, 1961:
also "Vom Menschenratsel" ("On the Riddle of Man") and Mein
Lebensgang (The Course of My Life).

Anton Bruckner, 1824-1896.

Wincenty Lutoslawski, "Rudolf Steiners sogenannte
'Geheimwissenschaft'" in Hochland, 8Jg., l.Heft Oktober 1910, S.45-58.
("Rudolf Steiner's so-called 'Occult Science'" in Hochland, VIII, 1,
October 1910, p. 45-58). Professor Karl Muth, editor of the journal, writes
an editorial comment in No. 7 of the same year, in which he describes
Lutoslawski as an "author who is eminent as a man and as a thinker."
Later, in Krisgshefte der Suddeutschen Monatshefte, Munich, February
1915, p. 623-631, Muth refers to his correspondence with Lutoslawski and
writes, among other things: "in addition to making several small
contributions to Hochland, Lutoslawski also published in this journal three
lead articles which aroused considerable attention among the readers: one
article on the theosophy of Rudolf Steiner, another one on exercises to
strengthen the will, and the third one on his conversion to the Catholic
faith. His published notes contain peculiar biographical clues . . . Where in
Germany - except in an inane asylum - would there be a human being like
this lector of philosophy from the University Geneva - a man who seems
to be completely disoriented as he confronts the magnitude of our
contemporary world-historical situation with complete blindness and a
paucity of ideas ! The relief which his overwrought brain received through
his epistolary outpouring did not satisfy him; he now insists that his latest
letter should come to the attention of the public as well."

Christ in Relation to Lucifer and Ahriman

Lecture by Rudolf SteinerLinz, May 18, 1915GA 159

This lecture, given in Linz on May 18, 1915, was translated from the German by Peter

Mollenhauer, Ph.D. It is included in Das Geheimnis des Todes (Vol. 159-60 in the
Bibliographic Survey 1961). Copyright © 1978This e.Text edition is provided with the
cooperation of: The Anthroposophic Press

Lucifer and Ahriman

From The Imagination of Pentecost by Richard Leviton

Lucifer's "profound tragedy" is the agony of being caught in Time, of seeing cosmically
unbounded Mahat working in an organic, manasic mortal body, of experiencing the
constriction of cosmic intelligence by the pressure of materiality. Lucifer's cosmic
enthusiasm for cognitive independence, for individualized intelligence, for word-building
imaginations, cannot countenance the limitations of materialization that is the human
experience of the Fourth Sphere called Earth. Why can't they be like me? Lucifer asks,
swooping archangelically over the fields of human life like and exultant lark. (Pages 234)

Steiner's assertion that Lucifer, one of the primordial spiritual beings of the universe,
actually incarnated as a human being ("an earthly incarnation of Lucifer in a man of flesh
and blood") is one fo his odder conceptions, especially if taken literally. (Pages 234-235)

It was as if Lucifer, regent of human manas and hierophant of the Mysteries, momentarily
took human biological form as a living fount of inspiration for the primeval, "pagan"
wisdom culture. In that capacity he brought the ancient Rishis, the original teachers of a
young humanity, the world of "intellectualistic thought," the domain of high reason and
pictorial conceptions, and the ideal of a cosmic and unconditioned activity of Intelligence
and Will." Intellectually, Lucifer taught the Rishis how to fly. Lucifer, Steiner reminds
us is a proud spirit who prefers to "soar away" on the wings of free-ranging intelligence
into the empyrean "where lofty visions open out." And he like s human company.
Through the Luciferic influence, humans build imaginative pictures that surpass physical
reality. Lucifer is the archangelic leaven that inspires "the airy viewpoint of a bird" in
people, an updraft that lofts them high above actual life circumstances. The liability of
this aerial ballet is "as excessive interest in our own concoctions," a conceptual self-
absorption that regards with disinterest the affairs of our human fellows, In a deep sense,
Lucifer cannot accept the consequences of what happened when humanity, through his
efforts, was brought into physical substance. (Pages 234-235)

Lucifer prefers ideas in their purity, as if they never found expression, through
densification, on Earth. Of course, this is the same manastic world-building principle at
play in the living imaginations or thoughts of the gods, but somehow, when translated to
Earth and practiced by humans, it becomes inappropriate to the intended goal of the
elaboration of the human Ego in a psycho-physical base, Lucifer clearly wants to pull
humans away from the material Earth, Steiner observed. He wants to prevent humans
from gaining a complete orientation in the physical plane, because, he feels, if they truly
came to feel truly at home on the earth, they mighty altogether forget the supersensible
pleasures of intelligence and sever their lifeline with the Light-Bearer. Page 236.

Lucifer's "continual and terrible war" to tear humans away from their proper residence on
Earth is played out unilaterally through ever shell of human consciousness, into the
deepest physical aspects of our being. Within the physical organism, Lucifer's sovereign
domain is the head, the brain, and skull - the perfected, "noblest" organs of human
thinking. In our time, the head is already in a retrogressive evolution and in fact "dying."
The human head actually developed long before the rest of the physical organism. Steiner
said: what brought the human head out of its antecedent animal form into its present
human shape was the Luciferic influence. The Luciferic spirits gained residency in the
human head when Michael thrust them out of the supersensible world into the
mineralized skull of the Human, and they've been there ever since.

But Lucifer is also with us in every breath we take. He enters the human physiology
through the breathing, which is the doorway to the blood and circulatory system. The
key to the breathing process is the etheric body. An etheric body that is over exuberant,
too widely extended, too intensely inclined towards the starry word, produces "an
excessively vigorous breathing process," and this provides the Luciferic forces their
opportunity to enter the body. With every breath, Lucifer strives to "dissolve and
evaporate" the materialized human, to lure it into the Luciferic "sea of colors and flowing
light." Meanwhile, this airy etheric expansion and its corresponding soul feeling of
"falsely mystical hopes," disorders the human blood and the "warmth process," the

rightful carrier of the Ego. Anything that disorders the unfoldment of the human Ego de
facto obstructs the Christ, whose sphere of influence is the Ego.

The Luciferic inflation, however, is only one hand of the assault on the incarnate human,
only one pole of the profound cosmic dialectic waged throughout every aspect of our life
here in the Time and Long Dominion. Lucifer's manasic dilation out of matter is
exquisitely counterpoised by Ahriman's intellectual compression into matter.

Ahriman: The Contraction into Time

Every since the bifurcation of Boundless Time into the polarized bings of Lucifer and
Ahriman, Lucifer has sought to fly free from the confines of finite time lived in matter
with human intelligence secure in his talons. Meanwhile, Ahriman willingly dove head
first into the weightiness, the gravity, of materiality, burying cosmic intellectuality deep
in the Earth. Generally, Steiner's view of Ahriman is markedly less bleak than the
Zoroastrian picture of Angra Mainyu as apocalyptic evil.

Ahriman, said Steiner, entered human evolution as a legitimate co-creator commissioned
by the gods to be the rightful Lord of Death and the intellect. The gods appreciated
Ahriman, if warily, as "asage of death," a cosmic being necessary to the progressive
unfoldment of human evolution. Ahriman's principal domain is the mineral kingdom, a
world that is "utterly dead," but his sovereignty properly encompasses all of external
nature. In the human sphere, Ahriman takes every opportunity to encourage humans in
the exclusive, material use of their intellect.

Yet Ahriman's legitimate commission empowers him to deliver the passing moment and
its valuable sensory contents back to eternity. In other words, Ahriman helps humans
considerably in physical world activitiers: in this he is our "cherished companion,"
helping us gather the sense-world fruits that he wishes to return to the atemporal.
Ahriman is an assiduous, compulsive saver: he preserves everything, gleaning all the
"precious treasures" from each passing moment to lay upon the altar of eternity.

Ahriman's great strongholds are libraries, filled with the "preservation and avoiding
change is so extreme, quipped Steiner, that he would stop the snake from shedding its
skin.

While Lucifer strives to capture Time by bringing the eternal into the passing moment.
Ahriman in contrast struggles to capture Space from Time. Ahriman's basic problem is
self-contraction; he suffers from a kind of ontological claustrophilia. From his own "self-
love in acting,'" Ahriman's world has contracted into a frosty, darkened cavern of one
being- his own; in this condition he affirms only himself and denies the rest of the world.
For Ahriman, freedom means "the proud feeling of manifesting himself in the action, said
Steiner, and that's why he needs more space: space for more matter, for more
preservation, for more egoistical self-being. Ahriman needs space in which to materialize
the spiritual world, to capture intelligence within materiality, and to hold humans
spellbound and "fastened permanently" to the Earth. That's the dangerous, "evil" side of
an Ahriman working beyond his lawful domain in human life, an insidious influence that
acutely overshadowed the materialistic nineteenth century beginning in the 1840's. So
the Druj was alive and well in the century of materialism, said Steiner, Even in the
supposedly psychic 1990's we cannot unequivocally declare ourselves exempt from the
Ahramanic deception. In fact, our time may present a perfect opportunity for Ahriman to
work his craft at seducing human intellect away from Michaelic spirituality.

Ahriman appropriates the human intellect by encouraging us to form material, physical,
sense-bound concepts to describe the supersensible world. Ahriman exerts a subtle
corruption to the Luc if eric pictorial, imaginative faculty; we start off building a concept
of supersensible wisdom as being like a library, then without catching the exact moment,
fine we've slipped into a very concrete reification of librarians, desks, books, filing
cabinets, due dates, and author indexes. We have unwittingly materialized - made it
literal, turned it to stone - a supersensible reality. Ahriman tempts the intellect,
struggling to form coherent concepts, to picture the subtle worlds according to physical
laws and material activities. Through this conceptual gravity Ahriman anchors the
human ever more deeply in the sensory world but in such a way that occult the presence

of the spiritual. "In every illusion that matter is the sole reality, we must perceive the
whispered prompting of Ahriman, Steiner warns us. (Pages 238-240)

Ahriman is loathe for us to apprehend spiritually the supersensible world, to really
approach it with subtle, pictorial, living imaginations, because these would free us from
sense-bound gravity which is his proper domain and base of action. The more we
materialize our intellect and permeate our thinking only with the concerns of physical
existence, the more remote become the supersensible worlds, and the more potently
present looms Ahriman, who claims his sovereignty on Earth. Ahriman succeeds when
humans gain acquaintance of the physical world in a non-spiritual way: that is, when
humanity settles for a false gnosis, for acquaintance with the Lie, as the Zorastrians
would say.

Ahriman fosters the illusion that elemental matter is a reality in itself, that physical-
sensory life is the consummation of existence. It is not hard to see how Ahriman's
materialism effectively bars all outlook on the spiritual world for many people; an
objective survey of the parameters of modern scientific theory and research demonstrates
this readily. The arbiters of contemporary scientific and medical thinking almost
unilaterally refuse to see through the material world to its true, spiritual foundations.
Matter and the body have no causal relation to spirit and min, They tell us endlessly. It's
not just the external word that Ahriman materializes. He permeates human
consciousness, too, with the conviction that the human is nothing more than a
"completely developed animal," fighting for survival among the fittest, as Darwin, the
nineteenth century's protege of Ahrimanic thinking, so concretely expressed. That the
human might be the living image of the Godhead is anathema to Ahriman and irritating to
the physical scientists. Where Lucifer wants to pull the human soul out of the restrictive
physical shell into the illusion of celestial freedom, Ahriman would discard the soul-
spiritual core altogether, exalting instead the material sheath and everything that comes to
expression through the body, like instincts and impulses, even the subhuman elements.
By this, Ahriman aims to make human nature "more and more earthy." (Page 241)

...Ahriman was permitted to exercise his maximum influence on human life before
incarnation, employing the forces of heredity, but he could not interfere with humans
after death, on their outward arch into the cosmos, Lucifer was allowed to wield his
influence on humans after they had passed through the gates of death but not on the
inward arch from the cosmos to Earth; Lucifer could employ the forces of climate,
education, and modes of behavior as legitimate spheres of influence. These appointments
defined their lawful jurisdiction.

A proposition of this scale is inevitably ambivalent. Ahriman buries manas in matter,
while Lucifer exalts manas in the ether. Ahriman permeates intellectuality with gravity,
while Lucifer imbues imagination with levity. What transforms Lucifer and Ahriman
from positive irritants to injurious opponents is why operate outside their rightful domain.

The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman

Rudolf Steiner (3 lectures: Dornach, Nov. 1914; GA 158)

Lecture I

THE idea of other worlds lying beneath or behind the physical world is very familiar to
us, and as an introduction to what I propose to put before you, I want to speak today of
certain characteristics of these worlds. By widening and extending the knowledge we
already possess, still other aspects of this subject will become clear to us.

As you know, the world bordering upon that known to our ordinary consciousness is the
so-called world of Imagination. The world of Imagination is far more inwardly mobile
and flexible than our physical world with its clear-cut lines of demarcation and its sharply
defined objects. When the veil formed by the physical world is broken through, we enter
an ethereal, fluidic world, and when we experience this first spiritual world, the feeling
arises that we are outside the physical body. In this spiritual world we are at once
conscious of a new and different relationship to the physical body; it is a relationship
such as we otherwise feel to our eyes or ears. The physical body in its totality works as if
it were a kind of organ of perception; but we very soon realize that, properly speaking, it
is not the physical but the ether-body that is the real organ of perception, The physical
body merely provides a kind of scaffolding around the ether-body. We begin, gradually,
to live consciously in the ether-body, to feel it as a sense-organ which perceives a world
of weaving, moving pictures and sounds. And then we are aware of being related to the
ether-body within the physical body just as in ordinary life we are related to our ears or
eyes.

This feeling of being outside the physical body is an experience similar in some respects
to that of sleep. As beings of spirit-and-soul we are outside the physical and etheric
bodies during sleep, but our consciousness is dimmed during the experience, and we
know nothing of what is really happening to us and around us.

You will see from this that there can be a relationship to the physical body quite different
from that to which we are accustomed in ordinary life. This is a fact to which attention

must be called by Spiritual Science and it is an experience which will become more and
more common in human beings as evolution leads on into the future.

I have said repeatedly that the cultivation of Spiritual Science today is not the outcome of
any arbitrary desire, but is a necessity of evolution at the present time. This feeling of
separation from the physical body is an experience that will arise in human beings more
and more frequently in the future, without being understood. A time will come when a
great many people will find themselves asking: "Why is it that I feel as if my being were
divided, as if a second being were standing by my side?" This feeling will arise as
naturally as hunger or thirst or other such experiences and it must be understood by men
of the present and future. It win become intelligible when, through Spiritual Science,
people begin to understand what this experience of division within them really signifies.

In the domain of Education, particularly, attention will have to be paid to it; indeed we
shall all have to learn to pay more heed than hitherto to certain experiences which will
become increasingly common in children as time goes on. It is true that in later life, when
the whole impression made by the physical world is very strong, these feelings and
experiences will not be particularly noticeable in the near future, but as time goes on they
will become more and more intense. They will occur, to begin with, in children, and
grown-up people will hear from children many things which in the ordinary way are
pooh-poohed but which will have to be understood because they ate connected with deep
secrets of evolution.

We shall hear children saying: "I have seen a being who said this or that to me, who told
me what to do." - The materialist, of course, will tell such a child that this is all nonsense,
that no such being exists. But students of Spiritual Science will have to understand the
significance of the phenomenon. If a child says: "I saw someone who came to me, he
went away again but he keeps on coming and I cannot get rid of him" - then anyone who
understands Spiritual Science will realize that a phenomenon which will appear in greater
and greater definition as time goes on,is here revealing itself in the life of the child. What
does this really signify?

We shall understand it if we think of two fundamental and typical experiences, the first of

which was particularly significant in the Greco-Latin age, while the other is significant in
our own time, when it is beginning, gradually, to take shape. Whereas the first experience
reached a kind of culmination in the Greco-Latin epoch, we are slowly moving towards
the second.

Experiences deriving from the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman are all the time playing
into human life. In this basic experience of man during the Fourth Post-Atlantean or
Greco-Roman epoch, Lucifer's influence was the greater; in our own epoch, Ahriman is
the predominant influence. Lucifer is connected with all those experiences which, lacking
the definition imparted by the senses, remain undifferentiated and obscure.

Lucifer is connected with the experience of breathing, of the in-breathing and the out-
breathing. The relationship between a man's breathing and the functioning of his
organism as a whole must be absolutely regular and normal. The moment the breathing
process is in any way disturbed, instead of remaining the unconscious operation to which
no attention need be paid, it becomes a conscious process, of which we are more or less
dreamily aware. And when, to put it briefly, the breathing process becomes too forceful,
when it makes greater claims on the organism than the organism can meet, then it is
possible for Lucifer (not he himself but the hosts belonging to him) to enter with the
breath into the organism.

I am speaking here of a familiar experience of dream-life. It may arise in many forms and
with growing intensity. A nightmare in which the disturbed breathing process makes a
man conscious in dream, so that experiences of the spiritual world intermingle with the
dream and give rise to the anxiety and fear which often accompany a nightmare - all such
experiences have their origin in the Luciferic element. When, instead of the regular
breathing, there is a feeling of being choked or strangled, this is connected with the
possibility that Lucifer may be mingling with the breathing.

This is the cruder form of the process, where, as the result of a diminution of
consciousness, Lucifer intermingles with the breathing and, in the dream, takes the form
of a strangler. That is the crude form of the experience. But there is an experience more
delicate and more intangible than that of being physically strangled. It does not, as a rule,

occur to people that a certain familiar experience is really a less crude form of that of
strangulation. Yet whenever anything becomes a problem in the soul or gives rise to
doubt concerning one thing or another in the world, this is a subtler form of the
experience of being strangled. It can truly be said that when we feel obliged to question,
when a riddle, either great or trifling, confronts us, then something seems to be strangling
us, but in such a way that we do not heed it. Nevertheless, every doubt, every problem is
a subtle form of nightmare.

And so experiences which often take a crude form, become much more subtle and
intangible when they arise in the life of soul itself. It is to be presumed that science will
be led some day to study how the breathing process is connected with the urge to
question, or with the feeling of being assailed by doubt; but whether this happens or not,
everything that is associated with questioning and doubt, with feelings of dissatisfaction
caused when something in the world demands an answer and we are thrown back entirely
upon our own resources - all this is connected with the Luciferic powers.

In the light of Spiritual Science it can be said that whenever we feel a sensation of
strangulation in a nightmare, or whenever some doubt or question inwardly oppresses or
makes us uneasy, the breathing process becomes stronger, more forceful. There is
something in the breathing which must be harmonized, toned down and modified if
human nature is to function in the right and normal way.

What happens when the breathing process becomes excessively vigorous and forceful?
The ether-body expands, becomes too diffuse; and as this takes effect in the physical
body, it tends to break up the physical body. An over-exuberant, too widely extended
ether-body gives rise to an excessively vigorous breathing process and this provides the
Luciferic forces with opportunity to work.

The Luciferic forces, then, can make their way into the human being when the ether-body
has expanded beyond the normal. One can also say that the Luciferic forces tend to
express themselves in an ether-body that has expanded beyond the limits of the human
form, that is to say, in an ether-body requiring more space than is provided within the
boundaries of the human skin.

Of attempts made to find an appropriate form in which to portray this process, the
following may be said. - In its normal state, the ether-body moulds and shapes the
physical form of man. But as soon as the ether-body expands, as soon as it tries to create
for itself greater space and an arena transcending the boundaries of the human skin, it
tends to produce other forms. The human form cannot here be retained; the ether-body
strives to grow out of and beyond the human form. In olden days men found the solution
for this problem. When an extended ether-body - which is not suited to the nature of man
but to the Luciferic nature - makes itself felt and takes shape before the eye of soul, what
kind of form emerges? The Sphinxl

Here we have a clue to the nature of the Sphinx. The Sphinx is really the being who has
us by the throat, who strangles us. When the ether-body expands as a result of the force
of the breathing, a Luciferic being appears in the soul. In such an ether-body there is then
not the human, but the Luciferic form, the form of the Sphinx. The Sphinx is the being
who brings doubts, who torments the soul with questions.

And so there is a definite connection between the Sphinx and the breathing process. But
we also know that the breathing process is connected in a very special way with the
blood. Therefore the Luciferic forces also operate in the blood, permeating and surging
through it. By way of the breathing, the Luciferic forces can everywhere make their way
into the blood of the human being and when excessive energy is promoted in the blood,
the Luciferic nature - the Sphinx - becomes very strong.

Because man is open to the Cosmos in his breathing, he is confronted by the Sphinx. It
was paramountly during the Greco-Latin epoch of civilization that, in their breathing,
men felt themselves confronting the Sphinx in the Cosmos. The legend of Oedipus
describes how the human being faces the Sphinx, how the Sphinx torments him with
questions. The picture of the human being and the Sphinx, or of the human being and the
Luciferic powers in the Cosmos, gives expression to a deeply-rooted experience of men
as they were during the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, and indicates that when, in however
small a degree, a man breaks through the boundaries of his normal life on the physical
plane, he comes into contact with the Sphinx-nature. At this moment Lucifer approaches
him and he must cope with Lucifer, with the Sphinx.

The basic tendency of our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is different. The trend of evolution
has been such that the ether-body has contracted and is far less prone to diffusion or
expansion. The ether-body, instead of being too large, is too small, and this will become
more marked as evolution proceeds. If it can be said that in the man of ancient Greece,
the ether-body was too large, it can be said that in the man of modern times the ether-
body is compressed and contracted, has become too small. The more human beings are
led by materialism to disdain the Spiritual, the more will the ether-body contract and
wither. But because the organization and functions of the physical body depend upon the
ether-body - inasmuch as the ether-body must permeate the physical in the right way - the
physical body too will always tend to dry up, to wither, if the contraction of the ether-
body is excessive; and if the physical body became too dry, men would have feet of horn
instead of the feet of a normal human being. As a matter of fact, man will not actually
find himself with feet of horn, but the tendency is there within him, owing to this
proclivity of the ether-body to weaken and dry up. Now into this dried-up ether-body,
Ahriman can insinuate himself, just as Lucifer can creep into an extended, diffuse ether-
body. Ahriman will assume the form which indicates a lack of power in the ether-body. It
unfolds insufficient etheric force for properly developed feet and will produce hornlike
feet, goat's feet.

Mephistopheles is Ahriman. There is good reason, as I have just indicated, for portraying
him with the feet of a goat. Myths and legends are full of meaning: Mephistopheles is
very often depicted with horses' hoofs; his feet have dried up and become hoofs. If
Goethe <http : //wn .elib . com/B io/Goethe . html> had completely understood the nature of
Mephistopheles he would not have made him appear in the guise of a modern cavalier,
for by his very nature Mephistopheles-Ahriman lacks the etheric forces necessary to
permeate and give shape to the normal physical form of a human being.

Yet another characteristic of Mephistopheles-Ahriman is due to this contraction of the
ether-body and its consequent lack of etheric force. The best way to understand this will
be to consider the nature of man as a whole. Even physically, the human being is, in a
certain respect, a duality. For think of it. - You stand there as a physical human being.
But the in-breathed air is inside you, is part of you as a physical being. This air,however,

is sent out again by the very next exhalation, so that the "man of air-and-breath"
pervading you, changes all the time. You are not merely a man of flesh, bone and muscle,
but you are also a "breath man." This "breath man," however, is constantly changing,
passing out and in. And this "breath man" is connected with the circulating blood.

Within you, separate as it were from this "breath man." is the other pole: the "nerve man"
with the circulating nerve-fluid. The contact between the "nerve man" and the blood is a
purely external one. Just as those etheric forces which tend towards the Luciferic nature
can only find easy access to the blood by way of the breath, so the etheric forces which
tend towards the Mephistophelean or Ahrimanic nature can only approach the nervous
system - not the blood.

Ahriman is deprived of the possibility of penetrating into the blood because he cannot
come near the warmth of the blood. If he wants to establish a connection with a human
being, he will therefore crave for a drop of blood, because access to the blood is so
difficult for him. An abyss lies between Mephistopheles and the blood. When he draws
near to man as a living being, when he wants to make a connection with man, he realizes
that the essentially human power lives in the blood. He must therefore endeavor to get
hold of the blood.

That Faust's pact with Mephistopheles is signed with blood is a proof of the wisdom
contained in the legend. Faust must bind himself to Mephistopheles by way of the blood,
because Mephistopheles has no direct access to the blood and craves for it. Just as the
Greek confronted the Sphinx whose field of operation is the breathing system, so the man
of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch confronts Mephistopheles who operates in the nerve-
process, who is cold and scornful because he is bloodless, because he lacks the warmth
that belongs to the blood. He is the scoffer, the cold, scornful companion of man.

Just as it was the task of Oedipus to get the better of the Sphinx, so it is the task of man in
the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch to get the better of Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles stands
there like a second being, confronting him. The Greek was confronted by the Sphinx as
the personification of the forces which entered into him together with excessive vigor of
the breathing process. The human being of the modern age is confronted by the fruits of

intellect and cold reason, rooted as they are in the nerve-process. Poetic imagination has
glimpsed, prophetically, a picture of the human being standing over against the
Mephistophelean powers; but the experience will become more and more general, and the
phenomenon which, as I have said, will appear in childhood, will be precisely this
experience of the Mephistophelean powers.

Whereas the child in Greece was tormented by a flood of questions, the suffering
awaiting the human being of our modern time is rather that of being in the grip of
preconceptions and prejudices, of having as an incubus at his side a second "body"
consisting of all these preconceived judgments and opinions. What is it that is leading to
this state of things?

Let us be quite candid about the trend of evolution. During the course of the Fifth Post-
Atlantean epoch, so many problems have lost all inner, vital warmth. The countless
questions which confront us when we study Spiritual Science with any depth, simply do
not exist for the modern man with his materialistic outlook. The riddle of the Sphinx
means nothing to him, whereas the man of ancient Greece was vitally aware of it. A
different form of experience will come to the man of modern times. In his own opinion
he knows everything so well; he observes the material world, uses his intellect to
establish the interconnections between its phenomena and believes that all its riddles are
solved in this way, never realizing that he is simply groping in a phantasmagoria. But this
way of working coarsens and dries up his ether-body, with the ultimate result that the
Mephistophelean powers, like a second nature, will attach themselves to him now and in
times to come.

The Mephistophelean nature is strengthened by all the prejudices and limitations of
materialism, and a future can already be perceived when everyone will be born with a
second being by his side, a being who whispers to him of the foolishness of those who
speak of the reality of the spiritual world. Man will, of course, disavow the riddle of
Mephistopheles, just as he disavows that of the Sphinx; nevertheless he will chain a
second being to his heels. Accompanied by this second being, he will feel the urge to
think materialistic thoughts, to think, not through his own being, but through the second
being who is his companion.

In an ether-body that has been parched by materialism, Mephistopheles will be able to
dwell. Understanding what this implies, we shall realize that it is our duty to educate
children in the future - be it by way of Eurythmy or the development of a spiritual-
scientific outlook - in such a way that they will be competent to understand the spiritual
world. The ether-body must be quickened in order that the human being may be able to
take his rightful stand, fully cognizant of the nature of the being who stands at his side. If
he does not understand the nature of this second being, he will be spellbound by him,
fettered to him. Just as the Greek was obliged to get the better of the Sphinx, so will
modern man have to outdo Mephistopheles - with his faunlike, satyrlike form, and his
goat's or horse's feet.

Every age, after all, has known how to express its essential characteristic in legend and
saga. The Oedipus legends in Greece and the Mephistopheles legends in the modern age
are examples, but their basic meanings must be understood.

You see, truths that are otherwise presented merely in the form of poetry - for instance,
the relations between Faust and Mephistopheles - can become guiding principles for
education as it should be in the future. The prelude to these happenings is that a people or
a poet have premonitions of the existence of the being who accompanies man; but finally,
every single human being will have this companion who must not remain unintelligible to
him and who will operate most powerfully of all during childhood. If adults whose task it
is to educate children today do not know how to deal rightly with what comes to
expression in the child, human nature itself will be impaired owing to a lack of
understanding of the wiles of Mephistopheles.

It is very remarkable that indications of these trends are everywhere to be found in
legends and fairy-tales. In their very composition, legends and fairy-tales which seem so
unintelligible to modern scholars, point either to the Mephistophelean, the Ahrimanic, or
to the Sphinx, the Luciferic. The secret of all legends and fairy-tales is that their content
was originally actual experience, arising either from man's relation to the Sphinx or from
his relation to Mephistopheles.

In legends and fairy-tales we find, sometimes more and sometimes less deeply hidden,

either the motif of the riddle, the motif of the Sphinx, where something has to be solved,
some question answered; or else the motif of bewitchment, of being under a spell. This is
the Ahriman motif. When Ahriman is beside us, we are perpetually in danger of falling
victim to him, of giving ourselves over to him to such an extent that we cannot get free.
In face of the Sphinx, the human being is aware of something that penetrates into him and
as it were tears him to pieces. In face of the Mephistophelean influence he feels that he
must yield to it, bind himself to it, succumb to it.

The Greeks had nothing like theology in our modern sense, but were very much closer to
the wisdom of Nature and the manifestations of Nature. They approached the wisdom of
Nature without theology, and questions and riddles pressed in upon them.

Now the breathing process is much more intimately connected with Nature than is the
nerve-process. That is why the Greek had such a living feeling of being led on to wisdom
by the Sphinx. It is quite different in the modern age when theology has come upon the
scene. Man no longer believes that direct intercourse with Nature brings him near to the
Divine Wisdom of the world, but he sets out to study, to approach it via the nerve-
process, not via the breathing and the blood. The search for wisdom has become a nerve-
process; modern theology is a nerve-process. But this means that wisdom is shackled to
the nerve-process; man draws near to Mephistopheles, and owing to this imprisonment of
wisdom in the nerve-process, the premonition arose at the dawn of the Fifth Post-
Atlantean epoch that Mephistopheles is shackled to the human being, stands at his side.

If the Faust legend is stripped of all the extraneous elements that have been woven
around it, there remains the picture of a young theologian striving for wisdom; doubts
torment him and because he signs a pledge with the Devil - with Mephistopheles - he is
drawn into the Devil's field of operations. But just as it was the task of the Greek, through
the development of conscious Egohood, to conquer the Sphinx, so we, in our age, must
get the better of Mephistopheles by enriching the Ego with the wisdom that can be born
only from knowledge and investigation of the spiritual world, from Spiritual Science.

Oedipus was the mightiest conqueror of the Sphinx; but every Greek who wrestled for
manhood was also, at a lower level, victorious over the Sphinx. Oedipus is merely a

personification, in a very typical form, of what every Greek was destined to experience.
Oedipus must prove himself master of the forces contained in the processes of the
breathing and the blood. He personifies the nerve-process with its impoverished ether-
forces, in contrast to those human beings who are altogether under the sway of the
breathing and blood processes. Oedipus takes into his own nature those forces which are
connected with the nerve-process, that is to say, the Mephistophelean forces; but he takes
them into himself in the right and healthy way, so that they do not become a second being
by his side, but are actually within him, enabling him to confront and master the Sphinx.

This indicates to us that in their rightfully allotted place, Lucifer and Ahriman work
beneficially; in their wrongful place - there they are injurious. The task incumbent upon
the Greek was to get the better of the Sphinx-nature, to cast it out of himself. When he
was able to thrust it into the abyss, when, in other words, he was able to bring the
extended ether-body down into the physical body, then he had overcome the Sphinx. The
abyss is not outside us; the abyss is man's own physical body, into which the Sphinx must
be drawn in the legitimate and healthy way. But the opposite pole - the nerve-process -
which works, not from without but from within the Ego, must here be strengthened. Thus
is the Ahrimanic power taken into the human being and put in its right place.

Oedipus is the son of Laios. Laios had been warned against having a child because It was
said that this would bring misfortune to his whole race. He therefore cast out the boy who
was born to him. He pierced his feet, and the child was therefore called "Oedipus," i.e.,
"club foot." That is the reason why, in the drama, Oedipus has deformed feet.

I have said already that when etheric forces are impoverished, the feet cannot develop
normally, but will wither. In the case of Oedipus this condition was induced artificially.
The legend tells us that he was found and reared by shepherds after an attempt had been
made to get rid of him. He goes through life with clubbed feet. Oedipus is
Mephistopheles - but in this case Mephistopheles is working in his rightful place, in
connection with the task devolving upon the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch.

The harmony between ether-body and physical body so wonderfully expressed in the
creations of Greek Art, everything that constituted the typical greatness of the Greek - of

all this, Oedipus is deprived in order that he may become a personality in the real sense.
The Ego that has now passed into the head becomes strong, and the feet wither.

The man of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch has quite a different task. In order to confront
and conquer the Sphinx, Oedipus was obliged to receive Ahriman into himself. The man
of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, who confronts Ahriman-Mephistopheles, must take
Lucifer into himself. The process is the reverse of that enacted by Oedipus. Everything
that the Ego accumulates in the head must be pressed down into the rest of man's nature.
The Ego, living in the nerve-process, has accumulated "Philosophy, Law, Medicine, and,
alas, Theology too" - all nerve-processes. And now there is the urge to get rid of it all
from the head - just as Oedipus deprived the, feet of their normal forces - and to penetrate
through the veils of material existence.

And now think of Faust standing there with all that the Ego has accumulated; think of
how he wants to throw it all out of his head, just as Oedipus deprives his feet of their
normal forces. Faust says: "I have studied, alas! Philosophy, Jurisprudence and Medicine
too, and saddest of all, Theology" ... he wants to rid his head of it all. And moreover he
does so, by surrendering himself to a life that is not bound up with the head. Faust is
Oedipus reversed, i.e., the human being who takes the Lucifer-nature into himself.

And now think of all that Faust does, so that having Lucifer within him, he may battle
with Ahriman, with Mephistopheles who stands beside him. All this shows us that Faust,
in reality, is Oedipus reversed. The Ahriman-nature in Oedipus has to get the better of
Lucifer; the Lucifer-nature in Faust has to help him to overcome Ahriman-
Mephistopheles. Ahriman-Mephistopheles operates more in the external world, Lucifer
more in the inner life. All the misfortunes that befall Oedipus because he must take the
Ahriman-nature into himself, are connected with the external world. Doom falls upon his
race, not merely upon himself. Even the doom that falls upon him is of an external
character; he pierces his eyes and blinds himself; similarly, the pestilence which sweeps
his native city - this, too, is an external doom. Faust's experiences, however, are of the
soul - they are inner tragedies. Again in this respect, Faust reveals himself as the
antithesis of Oedipus.

In these two figures, both of them dual - Oedipus and Sphinx, Faust and Mephistopheles -
we have typical pictures of the evolution of the Fourth and Fifth Post-Atlantean epochs.

When history, in time to come, is presented less as a narration of external happenings and
more as a description of what human beings actually experience, then and only then will
the significance of these fundamental experiences be fully understood. For then man will
perceive what is really at work in the onflowing evolutionary process, of which ordinary
science knows only the external phantasmagoria.

In order that the Ego should be strengthened, it was necessary for Ahriman-
Mephistopheles to enter into Oedipus - the typical representative of the Greeks. In the
man of the modern age, the Ego has become too strong and he must break free. But this
he can only do by deepening his knowledge of spiritual happenings, of the world to
which the Ego truly belongs. The Ego must know that it is a citizen of the spiritual world,
not merely the inhabitant of a human body. This is the demand of the age in which we
ourselves are living. The man of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch was called upon to
strive with might and main for consciousness in the physical body; the man of the Fifth
Post-Atlantean epoch must strive to become conscious in the spiritual world, so to expand
his consciousness that it reaches into the spiritual world.

Spiritual Science is thus a fundamental factor in the evolution of the Fifth Post-Atlantean
epoch.

The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman

Lecture II

IN the lecture on the Kalevala (see Note 1), I made a statement which you will probably
not have found easy to understand. You will remember, I spoke of a "being" that
stretches across Europe from west to east; and I spoke of it as having three limbs that
reach out in an easterly direction. I said that for the ancient Finnish folk these three limbs
were known as Wainamoinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkainen, and that they were what we
today, in our more materialistic language, call the gulfs of Riga, Finland and Bothnia.
You will probably have wondered how I could say that these gulfs had anything to do
with a being, when they are obviously nothing else than extensions of the surface of the
sea. There is no body; how then can it be possible to speak of a being?

I can well imagine that this difficulty might arise in your minds, and it is typical. For
again and again you will find that truths which come from the spiritual world lay
themselves open to the charge of being contradictory. The very fact that they do so is
significant and is quite as it should be; and the only way to arrive at a satisfactory
solution of the contradiction is in every case to make a still deeper study of the matter in
question. And this I want to do today in respect of certain problems in spiritual
knowledge. But first let me preface what I have to say with a few introductory words.

We will glance, to begin with, at some of the prejudices concerning the nature of man
that are prevalent in the materialistic thought of our time. Let us take one example.
Various physical processes are to be found in man, among others processes of the brain
and nervous system; and it is common knowledge that when these processes take place,
processes take place also in the soul. The conclusion is drawn that the processes in the
soul are no more than the expression of the physical processes. The materialist studies
what goes on in the body of the human being, finds there - or rather pre-supposes
hypothetically - delicate nerve-processes, and says: The thinking, feeling and willing
processes are in reality only accompanying phenomena of what is going on all the time as
physical processes. This view is quite commonly held today and it will undoubtedly
strike deeper and deeper root into the materialistic thinking of the near future. From the

point of view of logic it is about as clever as the following would be. - Suppose someone
walking along a road discovers tracks on it - here, parallel ruts, and here again, marks like
the soles of human feet. He thinks this over and says to himself: "The material of which
the road is made has undergone certain changes and influences, with the result that it has
in some places become packed together so as to form ruts, whilst at other places it has
been sucked downwards and we see on the surface what looks like the impress of a
human foot."

Such a conclusion is of course a crudely mistaken one, the truth being that a wagon has
passed and made the two ruts with the wheels, and a man has also been walking on the
road and made the other impressions with his feet. Not the nature of the soil, but the man
and the wagon are responsible for the tracks.

The case is no different with the processes that go on in our nervous system! Whenever
we think or feel or will, we are setting up processes that are of the nature of soul-and-
spirit. And so long as we live in the physical world, these processes are united with the
physical body, they leave their tracks in it - just as the wagon and the man leave their
tracks behind in the road. But these tracks in the body have no more to do with the
material of which the body is made than have the tracks in the road to do with the
materials of which the road is constructed. In reality, the processes that take place in the
matter of the brain and in the matter of the nerves have nothing whatever to do with the
actual thought-processes. The relation between them is no nearer than the relation
between what the man and the wagon are doing and what is going on in the surface of the
earth over which they are moving. It is really quite important to take a little trouble to
consider the matter in this light. For it reveals to one that the anatomist or physiologist
who investigates merely the physical processes in the organism is like a spirit-being who
moves about under the earth without ever coming up to the surface, and who has never
even seen men or wagons. All he can do is to observe from below that unevennesses
occur in the surface of the earth; he never comes close up to them, and he sees them
always from the other side. Investigating them in this limited way, he imagines the earth
itself has given rise to them by its own activity. The moment such a spirit were to come
out on to the surface, he would become acquainted with the true state of affairs. This is

exactly how it is with the anatomist and physiologist who work from the materialistic
point of view. They are always under the earth - for to know nothing of Spiritual Science
is to be "under the earth!" What they investigate is the material processes, and these have
nothing to do with what is happening above in the realm of soul-and-spirit. It will be
man's task in the near future to free himself from this anatomical and physiological
thinking and work through to a spiritual-scientific thinking. Then he will feel as an
underground imp might feel who was suddenly lifted up above the earth and saw for the
first time how the tracks he had observed from below had really come about. Imps
burrowing under the earth - that is what the scientists are, who take account only of the
spiritual that is under the earth - for even the material is spiritual! And mankind will have
to experience the great shock that must inevitably come when these underground imps
come out into the open - into the realm, that is, of the soul-and-spirit.

These introductory words were necessary in order to prepare you for the subject of
today's lecture, which I think you will find helps to solve the contradiction of which we
were speaking - that the gulfs of Bothnia, Finland and Riga are obviously mere surfaces,
and yet I spoke as though they were a being, or rather limbs of a mighty being stretching
from west to east.

We are accustomed to speak of ourselves as beings of space, and we are right; as human
beings we are spatial beings. When, however, we come to consider what we are in reality,
that is quite another matter. The fact is, man is in reality something altogether different
from what we imagine him to be when we look at him only in the outer Maya, in the
phantasmagoria of external appearance. There he appears of course as a being of space,
spatially enclosed within his skin. But directly we try to carry our thought a little deeper,
we are confronted with three great problems or riddles in respect of the human form.

The first of these riddles conceals itself under all manner of puzzling and mystifying
illusions. For the external Maya of appearance deceives us again and again in regard to
our own existence; and you can find traces of this deception in the science of the present
day, particularly at certain points where science is quite at a loss and has been forced to
construct all manner of hypotheses. Hypotheses have for example been constantly
brought forward to account for the fact that man has two eyes and two ears and yet does

not see or hear double. How is it that these organs are symmetrically disposed? How is it
that they are present not singly but in pairs? This simple fact offers science a hard nut to
crack, and you have only to glance through the literature on the subject to find what a
very great deal has been written on this question of why we see with two eyes and hear
with two ears.

Man is really coarsely organized; we can sometimes find evidence of this in the very way
we speak. For in reality we have also two noses! Only they have grown together and are
not so obvious as the two eyes and two ears. Hence we do not speak of two noses, but of
one nose; crudely organized as we are, we never discover that we have two! It is
nevertheless the case that in all human perception a symmetry comes to expression, a
right-and-left symmetry. Had he not two ears, two eyes, and two noses, man would not
attain to the perception of his own I or Ego.

Correspondingly, man needs also for the Ego experience two hands. When we clasp the
hands together and feel the one with the other, we immediately get something of an Ego
experience. And it is really a similar process, when we unite into one whole the
perceptions of two eyes or two ears. Every time we make a sense perception, we perceive
the world from two sides, from left and from right. And to the fact that we have these two
directions of perception left and right, and bring them together - to this fact we owe our
Ego-nature as human beings. Otherwise we would not be I- or Ego-men at all. If, for
example, our eyes were situated near our ears and we had no possibility of combining the
lines of vision, we would always remain beings who are involved in a Group Soul. To be
an Ego-being we must make the right and the left meet. Throughout the whole realm of
human perception there is always this crossing of right and left in the middle. Look at this
vertical line on the blackboard. Imagine that a plane projects out here from the
blackboard along this line. Everything comes, from left and right, up to this line of
incision. We, my dear friends, are ourselves actually in this plane. We are not in space,
we are only in this surface, this plane. We are not beings extended in space, we are
surface beings, that come about through the crossing of the impulse from the left with the
impulse from the right. And if to the question: Where are you? you want to find an
answer, not in accordance with Maya, but in accordance with reality, then you must not

point to the space where your body is standing and say: "I am here," but you will have to
say: "I am in the place where my left man and my right man meet." In reality you are
there, and only there. Just as we had surfaces in the case of the being of whom I spoke
before, surfaces where air and water meet, so in man we have the left half and the right
half. In that being the two halves were different, in man they are alike; but man is also a
surface being, man is a plane. It is Maya that we see him as having form and figure.

Whence then has man this form and figure? He has it because he stands in the midst of a
battle. A being from the left is fighting in man with a being from the right. If we were
able to be entirely within our left half we would have a powerful perception of the one
being, and if we were in our right half we would have a correspondingly powerful
perception of the other being. Our existence as a double being arises from the fact that the
Luciferic being is fighting in us from the left and the Ahrimanic being from the right.

Let us try to make a picture of it in our minds. From the left the Luciferic being fights his
way through and throws up, as it were, his fortifications, and from the right Ahriman
fights his way through and throws up his fortifications. And all that you can do is to stand
in the middle between the two. The left part of you - your left man, as it were - is the
fortification set up by Lucifer, and your right man is the fortification set up by Ahriman.
And the whole art of life consists in finding the true balance between them. We do it
unconsciously whenever we perceive with the senses. When we hear with the left ear and
with the right ear, and then unite into a single perception the impulses that reach us in this
way, or when we feel with the left hand and with the right hand and unite the two
perceptions, we are placing ourselves into the surface that lies on the boundary of the
conflict between Lucifer and Ahriman. As narrow as - no, narrower than - the blade of a
knife is the space that is left to us in the middle, where we have to play our part. Our
organism does not really belong to us; we are a battlefield for the Luciferic and
Ahrimanic powers - and for other powers too, of like nature with them, but into that
subject we cannot enter now.

We men are thus in reality surface beings wedged between two entities that are no
concern of ours! Our left man does not concern us, neither does our right man: what
concerns us is the process that goes on between the two.

And now we can develop a little further the comparison I made use of before. For, as we
all recognize, there are processes perpetually going on under the earth; but it is not these
that make the tracks in the road. Similarly, what happens in you in the right and left half
of your organism, all the processes that take place between Lucifer and Ahriman, have
nothing whatever to do with the experience you have in your soul. What goes on down
below the surface of the earth - the worms creeping about, the changes in temperature in
accordance with the seasons of the year, and so forth - all this has no connection with the
tracks that have come in the road, and it is these tracks that are comparable with what
takes place in the organism of man. Our researches in physiology and anatomy reveal to
us the fight that is being waged within us between Lucifer and Ahriman, but they do not
compel us to give ourselves up to the superstition that the life of the soul owes its origin
to these processes going on between Lucifer and Ahriman. That is a complete mistake;
the life of the soul takes its course within the soul itself - that is to say, in the surface, in
the plane, not in the spatial organism at all.

Now the working of Lucifer and Ahriman is not the same in all parts of the human
organism, and it is interesting to observe its gradation. Beginning from the head, we find
that there Lucifer and Ahriman have thrown up fairly equal fortifications; the left and
right halves of the head are very similar. This means that the forces of left and right have
in the head not much possibility of interplay and the surface between them is left
comparatively undisturbed. There in the middle is the surface, with Lucifer on the left
and Ahriman on the right; and because the left and right halves of the head are so similar
in form, Lucifer and Ahriman spring back from one another, and in between them man is
able to develop a quiet surface activity. Thinking, pure thought as such, is very little
disturbed by Lucifer and Ahriman; because in the head they recoil from one another.

When, however, we follow the form of man further down, we find a change. On one side
Lucifer works powerfully and builds up the stomach, on the other side Ahriman does the
same and builds up the liver. The stomach is the means with which Lucifer fights from
left to right; and no true understanding can come about of the relation between stomach
and liver, until we see how Lucifer has built up the stomach as a kind of weapon of
defence, and Ahriman the liver. These two - stomach and liver - are perpetually waging

war one against the other, and physiology would do well to study the conflict. And if the
heart of man tends to lean a little over towards the left, then that is an expression of the
fact that Lucifer from one side and Ahriman from the other are trying each to grasp
something for himself, The whole left and right relationship is an expression of the fight
that is being waged in man between Lucifer and Ahriman. We said that in the case of
man, what lies on either side of the middle surface is, generally speaking, alike. We have,
however, already seen that this is true only for the upper part of man; as we follow the
form of man downwards, the similarity gradually disappears. In the case of the being of
whom I spoke before, with the three outstretched limbs - Lemminkainen, Ilmarinen and
Wainamoinen - the one half is air and the other water; the two halves are totally different
in kind. And even in man, when we attain to clairvoyant knowledge it becomes clear to
us that there are two distinct halves. For no sooner have we suggested away the physical
body and turned our attention to the etheric body, than we find that the left half grows
brighter and clearer than the right half. The left half is all shining and gleaming with
radiant light, and the right half is wrapped in darkness and gloom. Yes, that is actually
how it is with the left-right human being.

There are, however, other directions in accordance with which man takes up his position
in the world of space. Expressed in the language of occultism, this means nothing else
than that he is placed in still other ways into the midst of the fight between Lucifer and
Ahriman. Let us go on, then, to consider how man stands in space with a forward and
backward orientation, looking before and behind. Instead of observing him as a being of
left and right, we will now direct our thoughts to the front and back of the human form.
From this aspect also we find that man is not the being of space he appears to be. For as
from left and from right Lucifer and Ahriman do battle with one another across man, and
what shows in space is really only the barricades they put up one against the other, so
also from behind Ahriman is fighting and from in front Lucifer. From behind Ahriman
thrusts forward his activity, and from in front Lucifer thrusts forward his activity in
opposition. Man stands in the middle between them. In connection, however, with the
forward and backward direction in man we discover that Lucifer and Ahriman do not
succeed in coming so close to one another as to leave nothing but a surface between
them. We find here a somewhat different state of affairs. Ahriman comes only as far as

the plane which can be drawn through the spinal column, and Lucifer as far as the plane
which can be drawn through the breast bone, where the ribs end and meet. In between
these two planes lies a space which separates Lucifer and Ahriman one from the other,
where the effects of their working are thrown together in confusion. There they stand and
fight - not at close quarters, but as though shooting at one another across the intervening
space. And there stand we in the midst of the fight. Thus, in respect of the direction
before and behind, man is a being that has space.

In the left-right direction the fight between Lucifer and Ahriman is waged principally in
the sphere of thought. Thoughts are whirled across from left and from right and meet in
the surface in the middle. Cosmic thoughts and cosmic forms of thought impinge upon
one another here on the human surface in the middle. In the direction before and behind,
Lucifer and Ahriman do battle more in the realm of feeling. And since here the opposing
forces do not approach one another so nearly, in the space that is left between them we
ourselves have room to be together with our own feelings. When we have thoughts that
offer opposition to one another from left and from right, then we have the feeling that
these thoughts belong to the world. With our thoughts we think the objects that are in the
world outside. When we make our own thoughts, then these thoughts are a mere
phantasmagoria; they do not any longer belong to the world. In our feelings, on the other
hand, we belong to ourselves; for there Lucifer and Ahriman do not quite meet, there we
have room to be active in between them. This is the reason why in our feelings we are so
essentially within ourselves.

We human beings are creatures of the beings of the higher hierarchies, and they have
created us in accordance with the manner of their working. We are beings of surface
between left and right because the higher beings have made us so and placed us so into
space. It is they, the Gods, who do not suffer Lucifer and Ahriman to come together in
man. We are in this sense creatures of the good Gods. The good Gods, working out of
their creative thoughts and purposes, took as it were this resolve. "A conflict is going on,"
they said, "between Ahriman and Lucifer. We must set up a wall and enclose a region
which they will not be able to enter, where they will not be able to carry on their strife at
close quarters." We human beings have thus been placed into the struggle between

Lucifer and Ahriman as creatures of the good Gods; and the better we stand our ground in
the struggle, the more truly are we creatures of the good Gods.

In respect of the before and behind, there the good Gods do not allow Lucifer to enter
right into us; they created a barricade in the place where the ribs meet in the breast bone.
And the wonderfully constructed tower that encloses the spine and the brain is a
fortification the good Gods have erected against Ahriman. Ahriman cannot pass this line;
all he can do is to send his arrows of feeling across to Lucifer. There in the space between
stand we ourselves, separating the two from each other.

There is still a third direction in man, the direction from above downwards. Here again
we have to make the discovery that the true state of affairs is not as it seems in external
appearance. For from below upwards works Ahriman, and from above downwards
Lucifer. Again we find that the good Gods have thrown up a barrier against Lucifer; at a
certain plane in man his influence is held in check. You will find the plane by taking the
skeleton and removing from it the skull. There where the skull rested on the cervical
vertebrae, imagine a horizontal surface. This invisible horizontal surface is the barrier,
where man can take his stand and hold up the Luciferic influence that comes from above.
Lucifer can come no further, he can only shoot his arrows thence down into man. And his
arrows are now arrows of will. From left to right fly arrows of thought, from front to back
arrows of feeling and from above downwards as well as from below upwards, arrows of
will.

Here, too, we have left to us an intermediate field of action. For about in a line with the
diaphragm, you have the surface that acts as a barricade against the upward pressure of
Ahriman. Ahriman can reach only as far as the diaphragm with his missiles of will, he
can come no further with his will, with his essential being; and in between the two planes
lies our own field of action.

You see how complicated the human being is ! Take any one portion of the human figure
- for example, the left Side of the face. As a being of thought, Lucifer can fill entirely this
left side of the human countenance; as a being of feeling he can also penetrate it up to a
point; and as a being of will he can enter right into and through it from above. And you

can go on to discover for every part of the body how Lucifer and Ahriman work in the
human being of space by means of cosmic impulses of thought and feeling and will,
remembering always that as beings of thought we are actually only surface beings, whilst
as men of feeling we have a space between the before and the behind where we can
unfold an activity of our own, and again as men of will we have a field of activity
between the above and the below, between the surface we imagined drawn through the
top of the cervical vertebrae and the surface of the diaphragm. You see, you have first to
abstract all those parts that do not belong to man at all, before you can build up a true
idea of the human form. Then, and only then, are you in a position to do this.

The truth is, the whole form of man has been put together by forces working from
without. It receives its distinctive character from outside itself, and we do not understand
the form of man so long as we consider it merely as it appears at first sight; we only
understand it when we know how it is connected with the whole cosmos of space, when
we are able to see how from right and left, from above and below, from before and
behind, Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces are bearing in upon man, and giving him the
character of a being of space.

And now, my dear friends, this is also the way in which you must approach something
else that has been shaped and formed in accordance with the true cosmic working in the
world. I mean our building here in Dornach. If you look at the Goetheanum (see Note 2)
merely in its outward appearance, you might be disposed to think that the actual building
itself, the space occupied by the wood, was the most important part. That is, however, by
no means the case. The most important part is what, judging by appearances, does not
exist! Take any one of the forms; the essential part of that form is not the shaped and
sculptured wood, but is where there is nothing - where the air bounds the wood. The way
to obtain the true and real Goetheanum would be to take an immense mound of wax and
make a model of the inside of the building, and then study this model or impression.
What you go into when you enter the building, what you stand within and cannot see but
can only feel - that is the thing that matters. I said once on a former occasion that our
building is built on the principle of a "Gugelhopf" (see Note 3) cake mould. Imagine you
have a tin mould and you bake your cake in it. Which is the more important - the mould

or the cake? Obviously the cake. What matters is that the cake should receive the proper
"Gugelhopf" shape. As far as the mould is concerned, all that matters is that the mixture,
when it is poured into the mould and baked, should turn into a cake of the desired form.

Similarly, in our building it is not the surrounding walls that are of importance, it is what
is enclosed within the surrounding walls. And within the walls will be the feelings and
thoughts of the people who are in the building. These will develop aright if those who are
in the building turn their eyes to its boundary, feel the forms and then fill these forms
with forms of thought. What is inside the building will be like the cake, and what we
build is the mould that holds and shapes the cake. And the mould has to be of such a kind
that it leads to the development of right thoughts and right feelings. This is the principle
underlying the new art in contradistinction to the art of olden times. In the art of olden
times the essential thing was what is outside in space; but in the new art something else is
of account. What is outside is no more than the mould, and the essential thing cannot
really be created by the artist at all, it is what is within.

Nor is this true only of plastic forms. It is equally true of painting. The important thing is,
not what is painted, but the experience in feeling to which the painting gives rise.
Painting too is no more than a cake mould!

The truth is, my dear friends, we have here touched the very heart and core of the
moment in evolution in which we stand. This is the step in evolution that has now to be
taken, the step forgive the trivial comparison - from the cake mould to the cake. The cake
is in this case the Spiritual; to enter into the world of the Spirit - that is the direction in
which all our endeavor must now be set. If we fail to recognize this fact, we shall never
be able to appraise correctly what we are trying to do here in art. For if we look at this art
from the standpoint of the old, we can very easily exclaim: "But I see nothing beautiful in
it!" We mean, I see no beautiful cake mould - never suspecting that the mould is not what
matters at all, but the cake that is to be inside it. When we once understand this principle
in art, my dear friends, we shall be very near understanding the whole meaning and
significance of the step forward in spiritual evolution which is to be made through
Spiritual Science. Through Spiritual Science man must learn to work his way out of the
"Gugelhopf" mould into the "Gugelhopf" itself. He must, for example, get free of the

superstition that the origin of thought lies in the brain processes, when as a matter of fact
in the processes that go on in the brain cosmic processes are at work and conflicts are
being waged between Lucifer and Ahriman. Man must learn to see that the thoughts and
feelings of the human soul are tracks graven into the twistings and turnings of these
conflicts and have nothing to do with the material processes - in other words, with the
Luciferic and Ahrimanic processes.

Let me draw another comparison. Suppose we were to go into a beautiful garden -
beautiful particularly in the whole arrangement and lay-out of the flower beds - and we
wanted to pronounce an opinion on this beautiful garden. And suppose we were able to
look down a hole in the earth and spied there a little underground imp who said to us: "I
will tell you how it is that here are roses and over there are violets, and why you find a
bush in one place and flowers in another. For I creep about all the time under the surface,
and I can see the earth and the soil which has caused all these flowers - violets, roses and
the rest - to spring up." We could answer: "Yes, you describe these processes very nicely;
all that you tell me is quite true and must necessarily happen. But for the garden to come
into existence as I see it, something else is required - gardeners must have been at work
there. They work, however, in a region which you have never seen and about which you
have never troubled your head at all."

In like manner, we must learn to say to the anatomist and physiologist: "I find your
activity when I look down through a hole in the earth. Down there you are creeping about
and discovering processes which certainly have to take place, but which have nothing at
all to do with what takes place in the soul and spirit above ground. And you will only be
able to interpret correctly what takes place down below, when you study the relationships
that hold sway between the Luciferic and Ahrimanic worlds and those other hierarchies
who bring Lucifer and Ahriman into balance."

Here we must refer to another fact in human evolution, that has hitherto only had
influence in man's conception of the Ego, but that we shall learn to know in a much fuller
and wider way through Spiritual Science. A time will come in the future when men will
say: "We are told in the Bible of the breath of Jehovah which was breathed into man. But
into what part of man was the breath breathed?"

If you recall all that I have said in this lecture, you will be able to see that the region into
which the breath was breathed is the intervening region that is in between the onsets from
before and behind and from above and below - there, in the middle, where Jehovah
created man, as it were in the form of a cube. There if was that he so filled man with His
own being, with His own magic breath, that the influence of this magic breath was able to
extend into the regions in the rest of man that belong to Lucifer and Ahriman. Here in the
midst, bounded above and below and before and behind, is an intervening space where
the breath of Jehovah enters directly into the spatial human being.

What I have been giving you in this lecture is spoken in respect of the human being of
physical space. As you see, even here we can widen our outlook and learn to behold man
as he stands within the cosmos. But there are also moral and spiritual aspects of what is
apparently external and spatial. And in these aspects too, where the workings of the
human soul are concerned - if not in so striking a way as in the case of spatial man, yet
here too, what meets us at first is found to be no reality, but only a phantasmagoria. In
morality, in logic and in all the activity of the soul, Lucifer and Ahriman are working one
upon the other, and man stands at the boundary between them. Of this most important
and significant chapter in the understanding of the human being we will speak tomorrow.

Note 1: 14th November, 1914. Not yet published in English.

Note 2: The first building, destroyed by fire on New Year's Eve, 1922/23.

Note 3: A shaped cake made in Vienna. Note by Translator.

The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman

Lecture III

FROM the previous lecture you will have been able to see that the very form of man's
body is a result of the co-operation of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers.

It is particularly important in the present age for man to recognize this co-operation
between Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers; for only by such recognition can he gradually
learn to understand the forces that are at work behind the external phantasmagoria of
existence. We know very well that we have no occasion either to hate Ahriman or to fear
Lucifer, since their powers are inimical only when they are working outside the realm
where they belong. We spoke on this subject at some length in Munich last year (see
Note 1); and we have also given indications in this direction in lectures here in Dornach.

When we saw last time how the physical spatial body of man owes its form to the
interaction of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers, we were dealing with the most external
element of human life in which Lucifer and Ahriman play a part. We come a little nearer
to the inner nature of man when we pass from the physical to the etheric body. The
etheric body may be regarded as the shaper of the physical body. At the foundation of our
physical organism - and embedded at the same time in the whole etheric world - lies this
etheric organism, in perpetual inner movement. Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers are
active here too, as well as in the physical body. Man as etheric being - and it is important
to recognize the fact - is also placed into the counterplay of these forces.

In order to give focus to our study of this question, let us now turn our attention to the
three fundamental activities of the human being in so far as he is not physical human
being. I refer to the activities of Willing, Feeling and Thinking.

So long as we regard man in respect of his physical body alone, we do not of course see
this willing, feeling and thinking. Only in its physiognomy or in the performance of
certain gestures or the like, does the physical body give us any indication of what is in
man's inner nature. The etheric body, however, which is in perpetual movement, is
continually giving expression to man's thinking, feeling and willing.

A purely external science finds itself in difficulties when it comes to consider these
activities of the human soul. If you will study the various philosophies you will find that
one gives pre-eminence to the will, another to thought; and there are again others which
consider feeling as the most important force in man. But as to how thinking, feeling and
willing unite in man to form a whole - to that problem none of the philosophies of
modern times can offer a solution. This inability to form a correct idea of the relationship
between thinking, feeling and willing in the life of the soul is not unlike the difficulty
someone might experience who, in order to relate himself rightly to the world around
him, set out to form a clear conception of man as he appears in the external world. We do
not know - so say the philosophers - whether the human soul in its essential nature has
more the character of willing or feeling or thinking. It is exactly as if someone were to
say: "I have no idea what a 'man' really is. One person brings me a five-year-old child and
says: There is a man for you! Then another person comes along and points me out a much
taller being, who is what is called 'middle-aged.' Finally a third person comes and shows
me an entirely different being, with wrinkled countenance and grey hair. And now I am
really at a loss to know what the being called 'man' is, for I have been shown three totally
different beings with this name." Of course the true answer is that they are all of them
"man." The one is very young, the second somewhat older and the third quite old; they
are very different in appearance. But by taking all three ages together we acquire a
knowledge of "man." It is the same with willing, feeling and thinking. The difference
there too is one of age. Willing is the same soul-activity as thinking, but willing is still a
child. When it grows a little older, it becomes feeling, and when it is quite old it is
thinking. The matter is made difficult by the fact that the different ages live together in
our soul in these three activities.

We have explained on other occasions (and you may read of it in my book The Threshold
of the Spiritual World) that when we leave the physical world we come into a world
where the law of change prevails instead of the law of persistence or fixity. There all is in
constant change; what is old can suddenly grow young again and vice versa. Hence in
that world the three activities can and actually do appear at one and the same time.
Willing shows itself contemporaneously as young willing, as older willing (i.e., feeling)
and at the same time also as quite old willing (i.e., thinking). The different ages are in

that world intermingled, everything is mobile. This is how it is with the etheric body of
man.

These changes cannot, however, simply come about of themselves. To begin with, a
uniform and single action of the soul does not come to consciousness at all in ordinary
life, we are quite incapable of bringing such a thing into consciousness. If we think of the
etheric body in the likeness of a flowing stream - for it is in the etheric body that we have
to make our observations - then we are obliged to say that this stream of soul-activity
does not come to consciousness at all in our life; but into this stream, into this perpetual
movement of the etheric body that flows in the current of time, Luciferic - and again
Ahrimanic - activity enters. Luciferic activity has the result of making the will young.
When the activity of our soul is streamed through by Luciferic activity the result is will.
When the Luciferic influence predominates, when Lucifer makes his forces felt in the
soul, then will is active in us. Lucifer has a juvenating influence on the whole stream of
our soul- activity.

When, on the other hand, Ahriman brings his influence to bear on our soul-activity, he
hardens it, it becomes old, and thinking is the result. Thinking, the having and holding of
thoughts, is quite impossible in ordinary life unless Ahriman exerts his influence within
our etheric body. We cannot get on in our life of soul, in so far as this comes to
expression in the etheric body, without Ahriman and Lucifer. If Lucifer were to withdraw
entirely from our etheric body, we would have nothing to fire our will. If Ahriman were
to withdraw entirely from our etheric body, we would never be able to attain cool
thinking. In between stands a region where Lucifer and Ahriman are in conflict. Here
they interpenetrate; their activities play into one another. It is the region of feeling. The
etheric body has actually this appearance; one can perceive in it Luciferic light and
Ahrimanic hardness. If you could look at it, you would not of course see it as we might
try to show it in a drawing; you would see it all in movement. But there are places where
the etheric body seems to be quite untransparent, as if it had ice tracings in it. Forms and
figures show themselves which resemble the patterns made by ice on a window pane.
These are hardenings in the etheric body, and they are the result in it of the life of
thought. This freezing of the etheric body at certain places is due to Ahriman; his forces

have found entry there by means of thought. There are also places which seem to be full
of light. Here the etheric body is transparent and gleams and glows with light. It is
Lucifer who sends his rays into the etheric body of man and makes there centers of will.
Then there are regions in between, where the etheric body is in perpetual movement and
activity. Here you see at one moment hardness - and then suddenly the hardness is caught
by a ray of light and melts right away. Hardening and dissolving, in perpetual alternation
- such is the expression of the activity of feeling in the etheric body.

Not only, therefore, is the form of the physical body of man called into being by the
interplay of Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces - now creating a balance, now disturbing it
again - but in the whole etheric body too, Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces are continually
active. When the Ahrimanic forces gain the upper hand, we have an expression of
thinking; when the Luciferic forces are in ascendance, we have an expression of willing;
and when they are in mutual conflict one with the other, we have an expression of
feeling. Thus do Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces play into one another in the etheric body
of man. We human beings are as it were ourselves the resultant of these forces, we are
placed into their midst.

Now we must not imagine that we are present in this interplay with our full Ego. Our
earthly Ego, the Ego that we have acquired in the course of earth evolution, can only
come to its full consciousness in the physical body. Not until the time of Jupiter will the
Ego be able to unfold itself completely within the etheric body. In all that takes place
within the etheric body the real Ego of the human being has no immediate part. Had the
progress of world evolution gone on without the intervention of Luciferic and Ahrimanic
forces, then man would have been an altogether different being. He would, for example,
have been able to have perceptions in his physical body, but he would not have been able
to have thoughts. The capacity to have thoughts he owes to the fact that Ahriman can
acquire influence over his etheric body. And he has impulses of will because Luciferic
forces can acquire influence over his etheric body. These forces are therefore necessary
for man, they must needs be present.

We have said that with our earthly consciousness we cannot descend fully into the etheric
body. Only in the physical body can we experience our full Ego-consciousness. With the

etheric body we enter a world with which we cannot fully identify ourselves. And it is so,
that when Ahriman enters into our etheric body, something more enters in with him
besides the thoughts he forms there. Nor is it only impulses of will that enter our etheric
body with Lucifer. And the same must be said of the feelings, the realm where the two
are in conflict. In so far as Ahriman lives in our etheric body we dive down with our
etheric body into the sphere of the elementary Nature spirits - the Earth, Water, Air and
Fire spirits. We are not cognizant of the fact because we are not able to descend fully into
our etheric body with our Ego. Nevertheless it is always so. Within this etheric body not
only does there live the power of the thoughts that we ourselves think, but the influences
also of the Nature spirits; these enter in and make themselves felt. When a man has met
with these Nature spirits he is able afterwards to tell of some experience he has had which
he did not have in his ordinary Ego-consciousness. For it is when he, is in an abnormal
condition that man meets the Nature spirits, namely, when the etheric body is to some
extent loosened from the physical body.

How can such a thing happen? It can happen in the following way. The etheric body of
man is in communion with the whole surrounding etheric world, therefore also with the
whole sphere of the Nature spirits. Let us imagine, to take a simple case, that a man is
walking along a road. When he is walking along a road in the daytime with his ordinary
consciousness, his etheric body is properly in his physical body and he perceives with his
Ego-consciousness what one is normally able to perceive with the Ego-consciousness.
But now suppose that he is walking along a path by night. When we walk along a path by
night, it is generally dark, and this fact will of itself produce in many persons a "creepy"
feeling. And just because he gets into this condition, then the peculiar sensations that he
experiences enable Lucifer to seize hold of him. His etheric body becomes loosened from
the physical body, and then this emancipated etheric body can enter into relation with the
surrounding etheric world.

Now let us suppose that the man comes into the vicinity of a churchyard where etheric
bodies are still present over the graves of recently deceased persons. In the condition in
which he is, with his etheric body loosened, he is perhaps able to perceive something of
the thoughts which are still remaining in the etheric bodies of the dead persons. Suppose

someone has died only a short time ago leaving debts behind him; he died with the
thought that he has incurred debts. Then it can be that this thought is still present in the
etheric body of the person after he has died. We do not of course ordinarily perceive the
thoughts in the etheric body of a dead human being. But for a man who has come into the
condition I have described it might well be possible. He could enter into relation with the
etheric body of the other and perceive within it the thought: "I have incurred debts." And
then because this experience strengthens the Luciferic power in him, there arises in him
the feeling: "I must pay the debt for him." He experiences in this way in his etheric body
something he would never experience in the physical body in normal life. Such an
experience does not happen to us in ordinary human life, and when it comes it makes an
extraordinary impression upon our consciousness. For it arouses the knowledge: "I have
had a strange and singular experience. I have not had this experience within the body, nor
can I ever have it within the body." We have the feeling quite distinctly that we are
somewhere else than in our body, and that is a strange, an unaccustomed feeling. We
experience at the same time an overpowering desire to return once more into the body,
we long for help to return again into the body.

This feeling of longing to return attracts to us certain elementary Nature spirits for whom
this very feeling in us is food and nourishment. They come, because they are attracted by
the feeling, "I want to be drawn into my physical body," and they help us to find the way
back to it. If one is asleep in the ordinary way, one finds the way back quite easily. But
when one has undergone an experience such as I have described, it is difficult to find the
way back. You must not of course imagine that we see the situation as we perceive things
in the physical body; no, we see it imaginatively, in pictures. Someone comes to us - it is
really a Nature spirit, appearing perhaps in the guise of a shepherd, and gives us the
advice: "Go to a certain castle, I will take you there in my wagon," - or some similar
words. The situation may even be still further developed. The body which we have left
and outside of which we have had the experience, may assume the appearance of an
enchanted castle from which we have to release someone when we return into it. So do
we "imaginate" in pictures the longing for the physical body and the help that the Nature
spirits bring to us. And then we come back into the physical body - that is to say, we
wake up.

People who have had such experiences will tell us that they feel they have in actual
reality come into contact in this way with the thoughts of a dead man. They say to
themselves: "That feeling I had was not something that was merely in myself, it was no
mere dream that I dreamed, it was a feeling that communicated to me something that was
taking place in the world outside. It is of course all expressed in pictures, but it does truly
correspond to an event." I will now read to you such a picture, where a man narrates what
he has experienced. As you will see, it was an experience somewhat similar to the one of
which I have spoken. He describes it as follows. "When I had taken leave of the soldiers I
met three men. They wanted to exhume a dead person who owed them three marks. I was
filled with compassion and at once absolved the debt, in order that the dead man might
rest in peace and not be disturbed in his grave. I walked on a little further. A strange man
with pale countenance accosted me, invited me to mount a leaden carriage, and persuaded
me to go with him to a castle. In the castle, he said, dwelt a princess, who had declared
she would marry only a man who came to her on a carriage of lead. He turned to the
driver and said: 'Drive in the direction of the sunrise.' Then came a shepherd who said: I
am the Count of Ravensburg.' He ordered the driver to drive faster. We came to a door
and we could hear a tumult within. The door was opened. The princess asked the man
whence he came and how it had been possible for him to drive in company with that old
man - and behold, I saw that he who had led me thither was a spirit. Then I entered in at
the door and took possession of the castle."

That is to say, he came back into his body. There you have the description of just such an
experience as I have been speaking of.

And what is such an event, when it happens to someone who then tells others of it? It is a
Marchen (a fairy-tale - see Note 2).

You must not imagine that an experience of this nature is the only way in which man
comes into relationship with the external etheric world through his etheric body. There is
another. And that is, in an activity which is only half conscious, an activity in which the
Ego only half participates - namely, the act of Speech. Our speaking is not so conscious
as our thinking. It is not the case that speaking is something which belongs to us and
which we have in our power. In speech live etheric Powers, and a good part of our

speaking is unconscious. The Ego does not reach fully down into speech. When we speak
we are in communication through our etheric body with the surrounding etheric world.
We learn to think as individuals, but not to speak. We are taught to speak through the fact
that our Karma places us into a particular set of circumstances in life. We have already
seen how we may come into relation with the Nature spirits in abnormal conditions when
the etheric body is loosened, and now we find that inasmuch as we speak and do not
merely think silently, we come into relation with the Folk Spirits. The Folk Spirits enter
our etheric body and live there - without our being aware of it. This life of the Folk Spirit
within the human being really belongs just as little to his fully conscious Ego activity as
does the "Marchen" of which I have told you. So much, then, for the activity of Lucifer
and Ahriman in man's etheric body.

The Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces enter also into the astral body. When we come to
study the astral body of man, we must turn our attention to what is the distinguishing
mark of the astral human being as he is on earth - namely, consciousness. In the physical
body form and force are the essentials, in the etheric body, movement and life: in the
astral body, consciousness. Now in the body of man we have not only one consciousness,
but two; the ordinary waking state and the state of sleep. But, strange to say, neither of
these two states is entirely natural to us. Natural would be for us an intermediate state
between the two, a state which, as a matter of fact, we never really consciously have.

If we were perpetually awake we would scarcely be able to develop in a proper, orderly
manner through the various ages of life. Something is always present in us which is less
awake than we are in our day-consciousness, and only by virtue of this are we in a
position to evolve and develop. Ask yourselves, how much do you expect to be able to
evolve through all that you experience and receive in ordinary life? For the most part, we
merely satisfy thereby our desire, our curiosity, or our need of sensation. It is not often
we act with deliberate intent to place what we experience in waking day life in the service
of our development. The truth is, development takes place through the fact that
something is continually sleeping in us, even in the daytime. I am not alluding to the
habit of dropping off to sleep in the daytime! But when man is wide awake by day,
something still remains fast asleep in him, and this it is which brings it about that he does

not remain for ever a child, but evolves further.

The ordinary waking state is what comes to consciousness through our astral body. In this
ordinary waking state we are, however, too strongly awake, we are too intensely given up
to the external world; we are, in fact, quite lost in it. How does this come about?

The reason is that the waking consciousness lives under the influence of Ahriman.
Ahriman has great power over our waking consciousness. It is quite different in the case
of the sleep consciousness. In sleep consciousness we are too little awake. We are too
engrossed in our own evolution; we are so completely and so powerfully within ourselves
that all consciousness is obliterated. In sleep consciousness, Lucifer has the upper hand.

This is then how the matter stands with our astral body. When we are awake, Ahriman
has the upper hand over Lucifer, and when we are asleep Lucifer has the upper hand over
Ahriman. They are in equilibrium only when we dream; there they pull with equal force,
they strike a balance between them. The ideas which are called forth by Ahriman in day
consciousness and which he causes to harden and crystallize, are dissolved and made to
disappear under the influence of Lucifer; everything becomes pictures when Ahriman is
no longer busy fixing them in rigid ideas. They melt and become mobile in themselves. A
state of equilibrium is induced in a pair of scales by having both scale-pans equally laden;
we have, then, not a state of rest but a state of equilibrium. It is the same with the life of
man. We have not in man a state of rest, but a state of equilibrium; and the two forces
which hold the scales and each of which at certain times brings extra weight to bear, are
Lucifer and Ahriman. In waking consciousness Ahriman's side sinks down, in sleep
consciousness Lucifer's. Only in the intermediate state, where we dream, are the two
scale-pans held in poise, not at rest, but delicately poised in equilibrium.

We can go on to carry our study into still higher regions of human life. Here too we shall
find evidence of how Lucifer and Ahriman fill the world with their inter-working. Two
ideas play a great part in human life. One is the idea of duty. We might also say, when we
consider it from a religious point of view, the idea of commandment or behest. We speak
sometimes, do we not, of the "behest of duty." The other idea, which can be placed over
against it, is the idea of right (or rights).

If you will reflect a little on the part played in human life by these two ideas of duty and
of right - 1 mean, the "right" one has to do this or that - you will very soon realize that
they are polar opposites, and that men's inclinations are turned now more in the direction
of duty, and now again in the direction of right. We live certainly in an age when people
are more ready to speak of right than duty. All possible spheres of life claim their rights.
We have Workers' Rights, Women's Rights, and so on and so on.

Duty is the opposite idea of right. Our age will be followed by an age when duties will be
more regarded than rights, and this will be directly attributable to the influence of the
anthroposophical spiritual world-conception. In the future - certainly, in a rather distant
future - we shall have movements where less and less emphasis will be laid on the
demand for rights and people will inquire more and more as to their duty. The question
will rather be: What is our duty as man, as woman, e.g., in this or that situation of life?
The present epoch that demands rights will be succeeded by an epoch that asks after
duties.

We said that right and duty play into life like two polar opposites. Whenever a man turns
his thought and attention to duty, he looks right away from himself. Kant has given great
and grand expression to this fact. He pictures duty as a lofty goddess, to whom man looks
up: "Duty, thou great and exalted Name, thou has nought to do with fondness nor with
favor; all that thou requirest is to submit thyself and serve." Man beholds duty, so to say,
raying down upon him from regions of the spiritual world. In a religious sense, he feels
duty as an impulse laid upon him by the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. And when man
surrenders himself to duty, he goes right out of himself. It is in this going-out-of-himself
in the feeling of duty, that man can begin to learn how to get beyond his ordinary self.

There is, however, a danger to man in all such going-out-of his ordinary self, in all such
endeavor after spiritualization. If man were to give himself up entirely to this, he would
lose the ground from under his feet, he would lose his feeling of gravity. Therefore he
must endeavor, when he surrenders himself to duty, to find within himself at the same
time something that shall give him weight, so that he may keep his sense of gravity.
Schiller expressed it very beautifully when he said that man has the best relation to duty
when he learns to love duty.

This is really saying a great deal. When a man speaks of learning to love duty he no
longer merely surrenders himself to duty; he rises out of himself, taking with him the love
with which otherwise he loves himself. The love that lives in his body, in his egoism -
this love he takes out of himself, and loves with it duty. So long as it is self-love, so long
is it a Luciferic force. But when man takes this self-love out of himself and loves duty in
the way that otherwise he loves only himself, he releases Lucifer. He takes Lucifer into
the realm of duty and gives him, so to say, a justified existence in the impulse and feeling
of duty.

If, on the other hand, a man cannot do this, if he cannot draw forth the love out of himself
and offer it to duty, then he will continue to love only himself; and since he cannot love
duty, he is obliged to subject himself to her, he becomes a slave to duty, he becomes, as
we say, a man who "does his duty," - hard and cold and uninspired. He hardens in an
Ahrimanic sense, notwithstanding that he follows duty devotedly.

You see how duty stands, as it were, in a midway position. If we surrender ourselves to
her, she annuls our freedom, we become her slaves, because Ahriman draws near on the
one hand with his impulses. But if we bring ourselves - if we bring all our power of self-
love - as an offering and offer it up to duty, bringing thus to duty the Luciferic warmth of
love, then the result is that, through the state of balance induced in this way between
Lucifer and Ahriman, we find a right relation to duty.

Thus we are truly, in a certain connection, redeemers of Lucifer. When we begin to be
able to love our duty, then the moment has come when we can help towards the
redemption and release of the Luciferic powers; we set free the Lucifer forces which are
held in us as by a charm, and lead them forth to fight with Ahriman. We release the
imprisoned Lucifer (imprisoned in self-love) when we learn to love our duty.

Schiller sets himself this very question in his "Aesthetic Letters": How is it possible to
rise above slavery to duty and attain to love of duty? Of course he does not use the
expressions "Lucifer" and "Ahriman," because he does not see the problem in its cosmic
aspect. Nevertheless these wonderful letters of Schiller on the Aesthetic Education of
Man are directly translatable into Spiritual Science.

Right, on the other hand, immediately shows that it is united with Lucifer. Man does not
need to learn to love his right, he loves it already ! It is perfectly natural that he should do
so. It is natural for Lucifer to be connected with right in man's feeling - man feels that this
or that is his right. Everywhere that right asserts itself, Lucifer is speaking there too. It is
very often only too evident how Lucifer makes his voice heard in the demand of some
right. Here it is a question of calling in something that can be set over against right. We
have to call in Ahriman to create a polarity to Lucifer. And this we can do by cultivating
the polar opposite of love.

Love is inner fire, its opposite is calmness - the quiet acceptance of what happens in the
world. As soon as we approach our right with this quiet and calm interest we call in
Ahriman. It is not easy to recognize him here, for we set him free from his merely
external existence, we summon him into ourselves and warm him with the love that is
already united with right. Calm and peace of mind have the coldness of Ahriman; in the
quiet understanding of what is in the world, we unite our warmth and our understanding
love with the coldness that is in the world outside. And then we release Ahriman, when
we meet what has come about with understanding, when we do not merely demand our
rights out of self-love but understand what has come about in the world. This is the
eternal battle that is waged between Lucifer and Ahriman. On the one hand man learns in
a conservative way to understand the conditions that are in the world, he learns to
understand how they have come about from cosmic, karmic necessity. That is one aspect
of the matter. The other aspect is that he feels in his heart the urge to make new
conditions possible, continually to let the old give place to the new. This is the
revolutionary current in human life. In the revolutionary stream lives Lucifer, in the
conservative stream Ahriman, and man in his life of right lives in the midst between these
two poles.

Thus we see how right and duty show each of them a state of equilibrium between
Lucifer and Ahriman. We only learn to understand how the physical body, the etheric
body and the astral body manifest in life, or how duty and right come to expression in the
life of duty and the life of right, when we learn to recognize the interplay of great
spiritual Powers, above all of those spiritual Powers who bring about the state of

equilibrium.

For just as what is in the external world stands under the influence of the spiritual forces
that bring about balance, so does our moral life too belong in a world of polar opposites.
The whole morale of human conduct, the whole ethical life of man with its poles of right
and duty, only become comprehensible when we take into account the instreaming forces
of Lucifer and Ahriman. And when we look at the life of man in history, that takes its
course in an alternation between, on the one hand, revolutionary and warlike - that is to
say, Luciferic - movements, and on the other hand, conservative - that is, Ahrimanic -
movements, there too we find a condition of balance between Lucifer and Ahriman. In no
other way is the world to be understood than by recognizing in it these opposite forces
and influences.

What we behold in the world outside is dualistic, it shows itself to us in opposites. And in
this connection Manichaeism, correctly understood, has its complete justification. How
Manichaeism is fully justified even within a spiritual monism - of that we shall have
more to say in the future. The object I have had in view in these lectures is to show you
how the whole world is a result of the working of balance.

Particularly evident is the result of the working of balance in the life of art. With this as
our starting-point we will go on in later lectures to consider the arts and their evolution in
the world, and the part that has been taken by different spiritual Powers in the evolution
of the life of art among mankind.

Note 1 : See The Secrets of the Threshold, by Rudolf Steiner.

Note 2: See Goethe's Standard of the Soul, by Rudolf Steiner.

The Deed of Christ and the Opposing Spiritual Powers
Lucifer, Ahriman, Asuras.

Berlin, 22nd March, 1909
GA0107

TO-DAY WE SHALL concern ourselves with the question: What does modern man
really possess in spiritual science? The answer to this question will be based on many
things that have come to our knowledge in the course of lectures, especially those given
last winter. Spiritual science may appear, at first, to be one conception of the world
among the many others now existing. It may be argued: The riddles of existence are
there; people endeavor with every possible means at their disposal, religious or scientific,
to answer these riddles of existence in an effort to satisfy, as it is said, their eagerness and
desire for knowledge. Spiritual science may well be considered just another philosophy
of life - whether calling itself materialism, monism, animism, idealism, realism, or what
you will. It may be represented as something that endeavors to satisfy the desire for
knowledge on a par with other modern world-conceptions. But this is not correct. In what
man acquires through spiritual science he has something of positive, continuous value in
life, something that not only satisfies his thinking, his thirst for knowledge, but is a real
and potent factor in life itself. To understand this we must look far afield and consider the
evolutionary course of mankind from a particular point of view.

We have often looked back to the times preceding the great Atlantean flood, to the times
when our forefathers, that is to say our own souls in the bodies of those forefathers, lived
on the ancient continent of Atlantis between Europe, Africa and America. We have also
looked still further back, to the Lemurian epoch, when the souls of men incarnated at the
present time were at a much lower stage of existence. We shall now speak again of this
epoch, reminding ourselves, to begin with, of the following: Man has attained the present
stage of his life of feeling, his life of will, his intelligence, my even his form, because
higher spiritual Beings in the cosmos have also been at work in earth-existence. We have
spoken of these Beings as the "Thrones", the "Spirits of Wisdom", the "Spirits of

Movement", the "Spirits of Form", the "Spirits of Personality", and so forth.

They are the great builders and architects of existence who have led the human race
onward step by step to its present stage. But we must bring dearly before our minds to-
day that Spirits and Beings other than those who help human evolution forward have also
intervened; there are spiritual Beings who oppose the progressive Powers. And for every
epoch - Lemurian, Atlantean, Post-Atlantean - it is possible to indicate which particular
spiritual Beings bring the "hindrances", which spiritual Beings are the opponents of those
whose only aim is the progress of humanity.

In the Lemurian epoch - the first that concerns us to-day - it was the Luciferic Beings who
intervened in man's evolution, in opposition to the Powers who at that time were striving
to help him forward. In the Atlantean epoch, the Spirits opposing the progressive Powers
were the Spirits of "Ahriman" or "Mephistopheles". The Ahrimanic or Mephistophelean
Spirits - to give the precise names - are those known in medieval times as the Spirits of
"Satan" - who must not be confused with "Lucifer".

In our own epoch, as time goes on, other spiritual Beings of whom we shall speak later,
will stand as hindrances in the path of the progressive Spirits. We will ask ourselves now:
What did the Luciferic Spirits actually achieve in the ancient Lemurian epoch?

These things will be considered to-day from a particular point of view. Of what domain
did the Luciferic Spirits lay hold during the Lemurian epoch? The best way to understand
this is to cast our minds back over the course taken by human evolution.

You know that on Old Saturn the Thrones poured out their own substance to lay the first
foundation of the human physical body. On Old Sun the Spirits of Wisdom imbued man
with the ether- or life-body. And on the Earth the Spirits of Form endowed him with the
T, the ego, in order that by realizing himself as distinct from his environment he might
become an independent being. But even if through the deed of the Spirits of Form he had
become independent vis-a-vis the external world surrounding him on earth, he would
never have become independent of the Spirits of Form themselves; he would have
remained dependent on them, he would have been directed by them as on leading-strings.
That this did not happen was due to something which had, in a certain sense, a beneficial

effect, namely the fact that in the Lemurian epoch the Luciferic Beings set themselves in
opposition to the Spirits of Form. It was these Luciferic Beings who gave man the
prospect of freedom - but therewith the possibility of evil-doing, of succumbing to
passion and desire in the world of sense. Where did these Luciferic Beings actually take
hold? They took hold of what had been instilled into man as his innermost member at that
time - the astral body. They established their footing in the human astral body and took
possession of it. Had it not been for the coming of the Luciferic Beings this astral body
would have remained in the sole possession of the Spirits of Form. They would have
instilled into this astral body the forces which give man his human countenance, making
him into an image of the Gods, namely, of the Spirits of Form. All this man would have
come to be; but in his life through all eternity he would have remained dependent upon
the Spirits of Form.

The Luciferic Beings had crept, as it were, into man's astral body, so that Beings of two
kinds were now working in it: the Beings who bring man forward and the Beings who,
while obstructing this constant impulse, had at the same time established the foundations
of his independence. Had the luciferic Beings not approached, man would have remained
in a state of innocence and purity in his astral body. No passions inciting him to crave for
what is to be found only on earth would have arisen in him. The passions, urges and
desires of man were densified, debased, as it were, by the Luciferic Beings. Had they not
approached, man would have retained a perpetual longing for his heavenly home, for the
realms of spirit whence he has descended. He would have taken no delight in what
surrounds him on the earth; earthly impressions would have aroused no interest in him. It
was through the Luciferic Spirits that he came to have this interest, to crave for the
impressions of the earth. These Spirits impelled him into the earthly sphere by pervading
his innermost member, his astral body. Why, then, was it that man did not fall away
entirely at that time from the Spirits of Form or from the higher spiritual realms as a
whole? Why was it that in his interests and desires he did not succumb wholly to the
world of sense?

It was because the Spirits who lead humanity forward took counter measures; they
inculcated into the being of man what would otherwise not have been his lot, namely,

illness, suffering and pain. That was the necessary counterweight to the deeds of the
Luciferic Spirits.

The Luciferic Spirits gave man material desires; as their countermeasures the higher
Beings introduced illness and suffering as the consequences of material desires and
interests, to the end that he should not utterly succumb to this world of sense. And so
there is exactly as much suffering and pain in the world as there is interest only in the
physical and the material. The scales are held in perfect balance; the one does not
outweigh the other - so many passions and desires on the one side, so much illness and
pain on the other. This was the effect of the mutual activities of the Luciferic Spirits and
the Spirits of Form in the Lemurian epoch. Had the Luciferic Spirits not approached, man
would not have descended into the earthly realm as soon as he actually did. His passion
and craving for the world of sense also brought it about that his eyes were opened and he
was able to gaze at the surrounding field of material existence earlier than would
otherwise have been the case. If evolution had proceeded uninterruptedly along the
course intended by the progressive Spirits, man would have had sight of the surrounding
world only from the middle of the Atlantean epoch onwards. But then he would have
seen it spiritually, not as he sees it to-day; he would have seen it as the direct expression
of spiritual beings. Because man came prematurely into the earthly sphere, forced
downwards by his earthly interests and desires, conditions were different from what they
would otherwise have been in the middle of the Atlantean epoch.

The result was that the Ahrimanic Spirits - "Mephistophelean Spirits" as it is equally
correct to call them - mingled in what man was able to see and apprehend; thus he fell
into error, into what, for the first time, can correctly be called "conscious sin". The host
of Ahrimanic Spirits has worked upon man since the middle of the Atlantean epoch
onwards. To what did these Ahrimanic Spirits entice him? They enticed him into
regarding everything in his environment as material, with the result that he does not see
through this material world to its true, spiritual foundations. Were man to have perceived
the Spiritual in every stone, in every plant, in every animal, he would never have fallen
into error and therewith into evil; if the progressive Spirits alone had worked upon him he
would have been protected from those illusions to which he must always fall a prey when

he bases himself solely upon the manifestations of the world of sense.

How did those spiritual Beings who desire to further man's progress act in order to
combat this corruption, error and illusion arising from the material world? They saw to it
- the process was of course slow and very gradual - that man was actually lifted away
from the material world as such; this enabled him to shoulder and work out his karma.
Whereas, therefore, the Beings upon whom it fell to rectify the enticement of the
Luciferic Beings brought into the world suffering, pain and what is connected with them,
namely death, the Beings whose task it was to rectify the outcome of error concerning the
sense-world, made it possible for man, through his karma, eventually to blot out all the
error, all the evil he has wrought in the world. For what would have happened if he had
become the prey of evil and error? Little by little he would have become one with the
evil; no progress would have been possible for him. For with every error, every lie, every
illusion, we cast an obstacle in the way of progress. We should fall back in our progress
to exactly the same extent to which we had cast obstacles in our path through sin and
error, if we were not in a position to rectify them; in other words, we could not reach
man's true goal. It would be impossible to attain this goal if the counter- forces, the forces
of karma, were not in operation.

Suppose that in some life you commit a wrong. If this wrong were to become firmly fixed
in your life it would mean nothing less than that you would lose the step forward which
you would have taken had you not committed the wrong; with every wrong, a step would
be lost - enough steps to correspond exactly with the wrongs committed. If the possibility
of surmounting error had not been given, man must ultimately have been submerged by
it. But the blessing of karma was bestowed. What does this blessing mean for man? Is
karma something at which to shudder, something to dread? No, indeed! Karma is a power
for which man should be thankful. For karma says to us: If you have committed a wrong,
remember that "God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap". An
error demands that you shall right it; then, having expunged it from your karma you can
again take a step forward!

Without karma, no progress would be possible. Karma is a blessing that has been
vouchsafed to us, inasmuch as it obliges us to rectify every error, to re-achieve the steps

that thrust us back.

Karma was thus the indirect consequence of the deeds of Ahriman. And now let us go
further. In our days we are moving towards the epoch when other Beings will draw near
to man - Beings who in the future before us will intrude more and more deeply into
human evolution. Just as the Luciferic Spirits intervened in the Lemurian and the
Ahrimanic Spirits in the Atlantean epoch, so our epoch too will see the intrusion of
Beings. Let us be clear about the nature of these Beings.

Of the Beings who intervened during the Lemurian epoch we must say: They entrenched
themselves in the astral body of man, drew his interests, impulses and desires down into
the earthly sphere. Where - to speak more precisely - did these Luciferic Beings entrench
themselves?

You can only understand this by taking as a basis what is set forth in my book
Theosophy. There it is shown that the following members of man's being must be
distinguished: first, his physical body; then his ether or life-body and his astral body - or
as I have called it in that book, the sentient body, or soul-body.

These are the three members with which man was endowed before his earthly existence.
The foundation of the physical body was laid on Old Saturn, the ether-body on the Old
Sun, the soul or sentient body on the Old Moon. On the Earth was added the sentient soul
- which is actually a transformation, an elaboration carried out unconsciously, of the
sentient body. Lucifer anchored himself in the sentient soul; and there he remains.
Through the unconscious transformation of the ether-body, the intellectual soul came into
being, a more detailed description of which is contained in the book entitled The
Education of the Child. It was in this second soul-member, the intellectual soul - the
transformed part of the ether-body - that Ahriman established his footing. From there he
lures man to false conceptions and judgments of material things, leads him to error, to
sin, to lying - to everything that originates in the intellectual or mind soul. In every
illusion that matter is the sole reality, we must perceive the whispered promptings of
Ahriman, of Mephistopheles. Thirdly, there is the consciousness soul (spiritual soul),
arising from an unconscious transformation of the physical body. You will remember

how this transformation came about. Towards the end of the Atlantean epoch, the etheric
body corresponding to the head came right into the physical head and gradually brought
about selfconsciousness in the physical body. Fundamentally speaking, man is still
working at this unconscious transformation of the physical body, at the development of
the consciousness soul. And in the age now, approaching, those spiritual Beings known
as the Asuras (see Note 1) will creep into the consciousness soul and therewith into the
human T or ego - for the T lights up in the consciousness soul. The Asuras will generate
evil with a far mightier force than was wielded by the Satanic powers in the Atlantean
epoch or by the Luciferic Spirits in the Lemurian epoch.

In the course of the Earth-period man will cast away all the evil brought to him by the
Luciferic Spirits together with the blessing of freedom. The evil brought by the
Ahrimanic Spirits can be shed in the course of karma. But the evil brought by the Asuric
powers cannot be expunged in this way. Whereas the good Spirits instituted pain and
suffering, illness and death in order that despite the possibility of evil, man's evolution
may still advance, whereas the good Spirits made possible the working of karma to the
end that the Ahrimanic powers might be resisted and the evil made good, it will not be so
easy to counter the Asuric powers as earth-existence takes its course. For these Asuric
Spirits will prompt what has been seized hold of by them, namely the very core of man's
being, the consciousness soul together with the T, to unite with earthly materiality.
Fragment after fragment will be torn out of the T, and in the same measure in which the
Asuric Spirits establish themselves in the consciousness soul, man must leave parts of his
existence behind on the earth. What thus becomes the prey of the Asuric powers will be
irretrievably lost. Not that the whole man need become their victim - but parts of his
spirit will be torn away by the Asuric powers. These Asuric powers are heralded to-day
by the prevailing tendency to live wholly in the material world and to be oblivious of the
realty of spiritual beings and spiritual worlds. True, the Asuric powers corrupt man to-
day in a way that is more theoretical than actual. To-day they deceive him by various
means into thinking that his T is a product of the physical world only; they hue him to a
kind of theoretic materialism. But as time goes on - and the premonitory signs of this are
the dissolute, sensuous passions that are becoming increasingly prevalent on earth - they
will blind man's vision of the spiritual Beings and spiritual Powers. Man will know

nothing nor desire to know anything of a spiritual world. More and more he will not only
teach that the highest moral ideals of humanity are merely sublimations of animal
impulses, that human thinking is but a transformation of a faculty also possessed by the
animals, that man is akin to the animal in respect of his form and moreover in his whole
being descends from the animal - but he will take this view in all earnestness and order
his life in accordance with it.

Man does not as yet entirely base his life on the principle that his true being descends
from the animal. But this view of existence will inevitably arise, with the result that men
will also live like animals, will sink into animal impulses, animal passions. And in many
things that need not be further characterized here, many things that in the great cities
come to expression in orgies of dissolute sensuality, we can already perceive the lurid,
hellish glare of the Spirits we call the Asuras.

Once again let us look back. We have said that suffering and pain, nay even death, were
brought by the Spirits who are intent upon man's progress. The words of the Bible are
unambiguous: "In travail shalt thou bear thy children!" Death has come into the world.
Death was decreed for man by the Powers opposing the Luciferic Spirits. From whom
came the gift of karma itself, who made karma possible for man? - To understand what is
here being said you must discard all earthly, pedantic notions of time. Earthly notions of
time give rise to the belief that what has once happened here or there will have an effect
only upon what comes afterwards. But in the spiritual world it is the case that what comes
to pass reveals itself in its effect, beforehand; in its effect it is already there, in advance.
Whence comes the blessing of karma? Whence has there arisen in our earth-evolution
this blessing of karma? From a Power none other than Christ.

Although Christ appeared only later, He was always present in the spiritual sphere of the
earth Already in the ancient Oracles of Atlantis, the priests of those Oracles spoke of the
"Spirit of the Sun", of Christ. In the old Indian epoch of civilization the Holy Rishis
spoke of "Vishva Karman"; Zarathustra in ancient Persia spoke of "Ahura Mazdao",
Hermes of "Osiris"; and Moses spoke of the Power which, being eternal, brings about the
harmonization of the temporal and natural, the Power living in the "Ehjeh asher Ehjeh" (I
am the I AM) as the harbinger of Christ. All spoke of the Christ; but where was He to be

found in those ancient times? In the realm to which the eye of spirit alone can penetrate,
in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world He was always to be found, working in and
from the spiritual world. It is He Who even before man appeared on earth, sent down the
possibility of karma. Then He came Himself to the earth, and we know what this has
meant for man. We have described what was wrought by Him in the earthly sphere, we
have spoken of the significance of the Event of Golgotha and of its effect also upon those
who at that time were in the spiritual world, not incarnate in earthly bodies. We know that
at the moment on Golgotha when the Blood flowed from the wounds, the Christ-Spirit
appeared in the underworld, flooding the whole world of spirit with radiance and light;
we have said that the appearance of Christ on the earth is the event of supreme
importance also for the world through which man passes between death and a new birth
(see Note 2).

The impulse going forth from Christ is in the fullest sense reality. We need but ask
ourselves what would have become of the earth had Christ not appeared. Precisely from
the opposite picture - an earth without Christ - you can apprehend the significance of
Christ's coming. Let us suppose that Christ had not come, that the Mystery of Golgotha
had not taken place.

Before Christ's Coming, the condition in the spiritual world of human souls who were the
most progressed, who had acquired the deepest interest for earthly life, was truly
expressed by the saying of the Greeks: Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than
a king in the realm of the Shades. For before the Event of Golgotha the souls in the
spiritual world felt completely isolated, enveloped in darkness. The spiritual world in all
its gleaming clarity was not transparent to those who entered it through the portal of
death. Each one felt isolated, thrust back into himself as though a wall were between
himself and every other soul. And this feeling of isolation would have become more and
more intense. Man would have hardened within the ego, would have been thrown back
into himself, nor could he have found any bridge to the others. And egoism, already
intense, would have increased beyond all telling with every new incarnation.

Earth-existence would more and more have made men into utter egoists. There would
have been no prospect of brotherhood on the earth or of inner harmony among souls; for

with every journey through the spiritual world, stronger influence would have penetrated
the ego. That is what would have happened to an earth without Christ. That the way from
soul to soul will be found again, that it has been made possible for the mighty force of
brotherhood to pour over all humanity - this is due to Christ's Coming, to the Event of
Golgotha. Therefore Christ is the Power who has enabled man to turn earth-existence
ultimately to good account, in other words to give karma its true configuration - for
karma must be worked out on the earth. That man finds in himself the force to profit by
his karma in physical existence, that advancing evolution is possible for him - all this he
owes to the working of the Christ Event, to the presence of Christ in the earthly realm.

And so we see many diverse forces and beings working together in the evolution of
humanity. Had Christ not come upon the earth, man would have been engulfed in error,
because having hardened within himself he would have become as it were a globe on its
own, knowing nothing of other beings, entirely self-enclosed, driven into that condition
by error and sin.

Christ is verily the Light which leads out of error and sin, the Light which enables man to
find the way upwards. And now let us ask ourselves: What was it that was lost to man in
that he descended from the spiritual world, was ensnared in desires and passions under
the influence of Lucifer, and then, under Ahriman's influence, in error, illusion and lying
in the earthly world? - He lost direct vision of the spiritual world, he lost understanding
of the spiritual world.

What, then, must he regain? He must regain full understanding of the spiritual world. As
a self-conscious being, man can grasp the import of Christ's Deed only by realizing with
full clarity of understanding, the significance of Christ. The Christ-Power is there in very
truth - not brought by man, for the Christ-Power was brought to the earth by none other
than Christ Himself. Karma has come into humanity through Christ. But now, with self-
consciousness, man must learn to know Christ in His real nature and His connection with
the whole universe. Only so can man work in the true sense as an T. What then, does he
actually achieve when, after Christ's appearance, he does not merely rest satisfied with

letting Christ's power work upon him unconsciously, with saying: I am content with the
knowledge that Christ came to the earth; He will redeem me and ensure my progress! -
but when he says: I am resolved to know what Christ is in all reality, how He descended;
I am resolved to participate through my own spirit in Christ's Deed! - what does man
achieve thereby?

Recall to your minds that because the Luciferic Spirits slipped into his astral body, man
has come down into the world of sense, thereby falling prey to the evil but also acquiring
the possibility of self-conscious freedom. Lucifer is in very truth present in the being of
man, has drawn him down to the earth, has ensnared him in earthly existence; inasmuch
as the passions and desires contained in the astral body had first been led by Lucifer into
the earthly realm, Ahriman too was able to invade the astral body - in the intellectual
soul. Christ appeared, and with Him the force which can bear man upwards again into the
spiritual world. But now, if he so wills, man can come to know Christ, he can gather all
wisdom to this end. What does he achieve thereby? Something of untold moment! When
a man knows Christ, when he absorbs the wisdom which begets insight into what Christ
truly is, then he redeems himself and the Luciferic Beings through this knowledge of
Christ. Were man merely to say: I am content with the fact that Christ appeared and to
allow myself to be redeemed by Him unconsciously - then he would contribute nothing to
the redemption of the Luciferic Beings. These Luciferic Beings who have brought man
freedom, also make it possible for him, if he so wills, to turn it to account in order to
understand Christ. Then the Luciferic Spirits are cleansed and purified in the fire of
Christianity and the wrong done to the earth by them is changed into blessing. Freedom
has been attained; but it will also be carried into the spiritual sphere as a blessing. That
man is capable of this, that he is capable of understanding Christ, that Lucifer, resurrected
in a new form, can unite with Christ as the good Spirit - this, as prophecy still, was told
by Christ Himself to those around Him, when He said: "Ye shall be illumined by the new
Spirit, by the Holy Spirit!" This "Holy Spirit" is none other than the Spirit through whom
man can apprehend what Christ has wrought. Christ desired not merely to work, but also
to be apprehended, to be understood. Therefore the sending of the Spirit by whom men
are inspired, the sending of the "Holy spirit", is implicit in Christianity.

In the spiritual sense, Whitsuntide belongs inseparably to Easter. This "Holy Spirit" is
none other than the Lucifer- Spirit, resurrected now in higher, purer glory - the Spirit of
independent understanding, wisdom-inwoven. Christ Himself foretold that this Spirit
would come to men after Him, and in the light of this Spirit their labors must proceed.
What is it that works onward in the light of this Spirit? The world-stream of spiritual
science, if rightly conceived! What is this spiritual science? It is the wisdom of the Spirit,
the wisdom that lifts into the full light of consciousness that in Christianity which would
otherwise remain in the unconscious. The torch of the resurrected Lucifer, of the Lucifer
now transformed into the good, blazons the way for Christ. Lucifer is the bearer of the
Light - Christ is the Light! As the word itself denotes, Lucifer is the "Bearer of the
Light". That is what the spiritual scientific movement should be, that is implicit in it.
Those who know that the progress of mankind depends upon living apprehension of the
mighty Event of Golgotha are they who as the "Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony
of Feelings" are united in the great Guiding Lodge of mankind. And as once the "tongues
of fire" hovered down as a living symbol upon the company of the apostles, so does the
"Holy Spirit" announced by Christ Himself reign as the Light over the Lodge of the
Twelve. The Thirteenth is the Leader of the Lodge of the Twelve. The "Holy Spirit" is
the mighty Teacher of those we name the "Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of
Feelings". It is through them that his voice and his wisdom flow down to mankind in this
or that stream upon the earth. The treasures of wisdom gathered together by the spiritual
scientific movement in order to understand the universe and the Spirits therein, how
through the "Holy Spirit" into the Lodge of the Twelve; and that is what will ultimately
lead mankind step by step to free, self-conscious understanding of Christ and of the Event
of Golgotha Thus to 'cultivate' spiritual science means to understand that the Spirit has
been sent into the world by Christ; the pursuit of spiritual science is implicit in true
Christianity. This will become more and more evident to men; and then they will realize
that in spiritual science they have a potent asset in their lives. Men owe to spiritual
science the consciousness which dawns in them by degrees, that Christ is the Spirit Who
fills the world with light. And the consequence will be that here on this earthly globe, in
the physical world itself, men will make progress in their moral life, in their life of will,
in their intellectual life. Through physical life itself the world will be spiritualized in

ever-increasing measure. Men will grow in goodness, strength and wisdom and will gaze
with ever deepening vision into the foundations and origins of existence. They will bear
with them into the supersensible life the fruits acquired in this physical life, and ever and
again bring these fruits back from the supersensible life into a new incarnation.

Thus the earth will more and more become the expression of its Spirit, of the Christ-
Spirit. Spiritual science will be understood in the light of the world's foundations,
apprehended as a real and active power. In various respects to-day mankind is near to
losing the Spirit altogether. In the recent public lecture (see Note 3) it was said that men
suffer to-day under the fear of heredity. The fear of the burden of heredity is the direct
offspring of our materialistic age. But is it enough if a man simply says to himself that he
need not have this fear? - By no means does that suffice. A man who does not concern
himself with the spiritual world, who does not instill into his soul what can flow from
spiritual science, is subject to the forces of physical heredity. Only by steeping his whole
being in what spiritual science can communicate to him does he gain mastery over the
forces of heredity, regards it as a factor of no essential significance and becomes the
victor of everything that the powers of hindrance place in his way in the external world. It
is not by arguing or philosophizing it away, or by contending: Spirit exists ! - that man
brings the life of the senses under his command, but by permeating himself with the
Spirit, by absorbing the Spirit, by having the will to acquire intimate knowledge of the
Spirit. Then spiritual science will make men healthier even in the physical world; for
spiritual science is itself a therapy that brings vigor and health. And the essential power
of spiritual science will become still more evident to us when we consider what becomes
of the human being when he passes through the gate of death. The modern mind finds
great difficulty here.

Man thinks to himself: Why need I trouble about what happens in the spiritual world?
When I die I go into the spiritual world in any case and then I shall see and hear what
goes on there! In endless variations one hears this easy-going way of talking: Why should
I trouble about the spiritual before I die? When the time comes I shall see what there is to
see. My relationship to the spiritual world will not be altered in the slightest, no matter
whether I do or do not concern myself with it. - But indeed this is not so! A man who

thinks in such a way will enter a world of darkness and gloom, unable to make very much
of what is said in my book Theosophy about the spiritual worlds. For it is only by allying
himself in spirit and soul with the spiritual world during life in the physical world that
man can acquire the faculty of perception in the spiritual world; the preparation must be
made in his life here on earth. The spiritual world is there in very truth - the faculty of
being able to see in that world must be acquired on the earth; otherwise there is blindness
in the spiritual world.

Spiritual science is therefore the power which alone makes it possible for man to enter
the spiritual world with consciousness. Had Christ not appeared in the physical world,
man would have gone under in that world, could not have found entry to the spiritual
world. But Christ lifts him into the spiritual world in such a way that he can see and be
conscious there. This depends upon his knowledge of how to unite his being with the
Spirit sent by Christ; failing that knowledge, he remains unconscious. Man has to win his
immortality through his own efforts, for an unconscious immortality is no immortality. A
beautiful saying of Meister Eckhardt is: "What does it profit a man to be a king if he
knows it not," - What he meant was: Of what use is the spiritual world to a man if he does
not know what the spiritual worlds are in reality? The capacity for seeing the spiritual
world can be acquired only in the physical world. Those who ask: Why was it necessary
for man to descend at all into the physical world? do well to take this to heart. - Man
descended in order to acquire vision of the spiritual world. He would have remained blind
to the spiritual world had he not descended and attained the self-conscious manhood
which enables him to return to the spiritual world now lying in radiance and light before
his soul.

Spiritual science is therefore not merely a "conception of the world" in the accepted sense
but something without which - even in the immortal part of his being - man can know
nothing about the worlds of immortality. Spiritual science is an active power, permeating
the soul as reality. And in that you are present here in the pursuit of spiritual science, you
are not only gathering knowledge but you are growing into something you would
otherwise not have become. That is the difference between spiritual science and other
world-conceptions. The latter are rooted in knowledge; spiritual science is rooted in

being.

Rightly conceived, these things will make us say to ourselves: With this illumination, an
inner, fundamental connection is revealed between Christ, the Spirit, and spiritual
science. In face of this connection all the superficial statements made to-day to the effect
that a Western trend is being set up in opposition to an Eastern trend of occultism fall to
the ground. There can be no question of any such opposition. There are not two
occultisms, there is only one occultism; and there is no opposition between eastern and
western Theosophy. There is only one truth. And what is our reply to be when we are
asked: If eastern occultism is the same as western occultism, why is it that in eastern
occultism, Christ is not acknowledged? The right reply is that it is not for us to give the
answer; that obligation does not rest upon us, for we fully acknowledge eastern
occultism. If asked whether we acknowledge what eastern occultism says about Brahma,
about the Buddha, we shall answer: Most certainly we acknowledge it. We understand
what is meant when we are told that the Buddha attained his exalted rank in this or that
way. We deny no single one of the eastern truths; in so far as they are positive truths we
acknowledge them all. But shall this prevent us from acknowledging as well, what goes
yet further? No indeed! We acknowledge what is said by eastern occultism, but that does
not prevent us from acknowledging, too, the western truths.

When people allege that it is an inferior way of thinking on the part of orientalists to say
that the Buddha died from eating too much pork - as these learned gentlemen assert - and
it is explained that this actually has a deep meaning, namely that the Buddha imparted to
those immediately around him too much of the esoteric wisdom, so that this over-
abundance caused the onset of a kind of karma - then we agree that it is so; we say:
certainly there lie behind it the deeper esoteric truths as stated by you who are eastern
esotericists ! - But when the statement that the Apocalypse was revealed to St. John on
Patmos amid thunder and lightning is held to be unintelligible (see Note 4), then our
answer will be: everyone who is aware of what is really meant, knows that it is a truth!
We do not refute what is said about the Buddha but we cannot agree when the validity of
the other statement (concerning the Apocalypse) is denied. We do not contest the
assertion that the astral body of the Buddha was preserved and was later incorporated in

Shankaracharya. But that does not prevent us from teaching that the astral body of Jesus
of Nazareth was preserved and in multiple replicas was incorporated in various
individuals dedicated to Christianity, like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Elizabeth of
Thiiringen. We deny no single truth of oriental esotericism. Therefore when we are
asked: Why is anything refuted? Why is there opposition? - it is not incumbent upon us to
answer. It would be incumbent upon us to answer if the opposition came from our side.
But it does not! The duty to answer rests upon one who denies, not upon one who agrees.
That is obvious enough.

In the coming weeks (see Note 5) you will be able to hear of the connection between
spiritual science and the Event of Golgotha and you will realize that the whole vocation,
the whole mission of the spiritual scientific movement in the world is raised to a higher
sphere inasmuch as spiritual science puts into effect the inspiration, the power proclaimed
as the Spirit by Christ Himself.

So we see how Powers work together in the world, how everything that appears to oppose
the progress of mankind subsequently turns out to be a blessing. We realize, too, that in
the Post-Atlantean epoch - from age to age - the Spirit who has brought man freedom will
appear again in a new form; Luciferus, the sovereign Bearer of Light, will be redeemed.
For everything in the great World Plan is good and the evil endures only for a season.
Therefore he alone believes in eternity of the evil who confounds the temporal with the
eternal; he who does not rise from the temporal to the eternal can never understand the
evil.

Note 1: The Asuras are retarded Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archai (Spirits of
Personality). They are Beings who instead of furthering man's progress to
independence, lure him into gross egoism. In the negative sense they now bear the
name originally pertaining to the entire Hierarchy. C.S.P.

Note 2: Cp. Lecture 13, Cycle VIII: The Gospel of St. John in relation to the other three
Gospels, especially to the Gospel of St. Luke. "At the moment when the Blood
flowed from the wounds on Golgotha, the earth - which in the course of evolution
had grown ever darker - began to send rays out into cosmic space, began to be

radiant."

Note 3: Berlin, 18th February, 1909.

Note 4: The reference is to a passage in The Secret Doctrine, by H. P. Blavatsky. A later
volume, compiled by Annie Besant from manuscripts left by Blavatsky includes a
statement indicating that the author was not unaware of the significance of
thunder and lightening as an accompaniment of spiritual revelations. (C.S.P.)

Note 5: Lecture-Course on the "Spiritual Hierarchies".

The Deed of Christ and the Opposing Spiritual Powers
Mephistopheles and Earthquakes

Berlin, 01 January 1909

The theme of the lecture to-day is of a profoundly occult character, the title - strange as it
may seem to begin with - being: "Mephistopheles and Earthquakes". We shall see that
not only does the problem of the figure of Mephistopheles lead us into a deep realm of
occultism but that the same applies to the problem of earthquakes if explained from the
spiritual point of view. I have already spoken here and in several other places about the
interior of the earth and have also referred to the question of earthquakes. We shall now
approach the subject of these most tragic happenings on the earth's surface, from yet
another side.

The figure of Mephistopheles which will be our starting-point to-day, is familiar to you
all from Goethe's Faust. You know that Mephistopheles is a Being - we shall not enter to-
day into the question of how far the poetic presentation tallies with the occult facts - a
figure who appears in the drama as the seducer and tempter of Faust who, in a certain
respect, may be thought of as the representative of man aspiring to reach the heights of
existence. In lectures on Goethe I have also indicated what spiritual vistas are revealed in
the scene of the "Passage to the Mothers", where Mephistopheles holds in his hand the
key giving access to the dark, nether region where the Mothers dwell. Mephistopheles
himself may not enter this region. He merely indicates that in this mysterious realm there
is no difference between "below" and "above":

"Sink then! I might as well say, Mountl'Tis quite the same."

We know too that in characterizing this region, Mephistopheles uses the word "Naught",
"Nothingness". In a certain sense, therefore, he represents the spirit who in this "Naught"
would be seeking something that is valueless to him. Faust answers as any true seeker to-
day might answer a materialistic thinker: "In thy Naught I hope to find the All".

Goethean research has made many attempts to find the clue to the figure of
Mephistopheles. In other lectures I have said that the explanation of the name
Mephistopheles is to be found in the Hebrew language, where "Mephiz" is the word used
for one who obstructs, who corrupts, and "topel" for one who lies. We have therefore to
think of this name as belonging to a being who brings corruption and hindrances to man
and is a spirit of untruth, deception and illusion.

It may occur to those who read the introduction to Faust, the "Prologue in Heaven",
thoughtfully, that it contains words which resound as it were across thousands of years.
Goethe has let words spoken between the Lord and Job in the Book of Job re-echo at the
beginning of Faust. In the Book of Job we read that Job is a good, upright and pious man
and of how the sons of the Lord of Light present themselves before Him. Among them is
a certain enemy of the Light. In a conversation between the enemy of the Light and the
supreme Lord, this enemy of the Light says that he has "gone to and fro in the earth",
seeking and trying out many things. The Lord asks: "Knowest thou my servant Job?" and
the enemy of the Light - for so we will call him - answers the Lord that Job is known to
him and that he would assuredly be able to divert him from the Good and bring him to
perdition. This spirit has to make two attempts to approach Job and he then lays hold of
him through injuring his physical body. He indicates this expressly when he says to the
Lord: "Seize his possessions and he will not fall; but touch his bone and his flesh and he
will fall!" Who can fail to hear an echo of this in Faust when the Lord calls to
Mephistopheles in the "Prologue in Heaven": "Knowest thou Faust, my servant!" And
then, in similar terms, we hear the retort of the spirit who in the Book of Job comes
before the Lord, when Mephistopheles asserts that he can lead Faust gently on the way,
that he can win him from the paths which lead to the Good. Here, then, we are listening
to sounds striking together in unison across the ages.

When you are thinking about the figure of Mephistopheles, you may often have asked
yourselves: Who is Mephistopheles, in reality? Grave mistakes are made here, mistakes
which admittedly can be corrected only by deeper, occult insight. The name itself

suggests that Mephistopheles is associated with the devil, or the idea of the devil, for the
word "topel" is the same as "Teufel" - devil. But the other question - and here we come
into a realm of serious fallacies which frequently occur in explanations of the figure of
Mephistopheles - the other question is: Whether Mephistopheles can be identified with
the spirit we know as Lucifer, who during and after the Lemurian epoch approached
mankind together with his hosts and entrenched himself as it were in the evolutionary
process? The prevailing tendency in Europe is to identify the figure of Mephistopheles as
he appears in Goethe's Faust but also in earlier folk-literature (Folk Plays, Puppet Plays
and so forth), with Lucifer. Mephistopheles is a familiar character everywhere, and the
question is: Are he and his hosts identical with Lucifer and his hosts? In other words: Are
the effects of the Mephistophelean influence upon man the same as those of Lucifer? -
That is the question before us to-day.

We know when Lucifer approached man. We have studied the course of human evolution
on earth through the epoch when the sun with its beings, and subsequently the moon,
separated from the earth together with the forces that would have made further
development for man impossible. And we have learned that at a time when man was still
not ready for his astral body to become independent, Lucifer and his hosts approached
him. The effect upon man was twofold. It was towards the end of the Lemurian epoch
when, in his astral body, man was actually exposed to the influences issuing from
Lucifer. If Lucifer had not approached, man would, it is true, have been protected from
certain evils but he would not have attained what must be accounted one of his greatest
blessings.

The significance of Lucifer's influence becomes evident when we ask ourselves what
would have transpired if since the Lemurian epoch there had been no Luciferic influence,
if Lucifer and his hosts had remained separate and apart from man's evolution! Until the
middle of the Atlantean epoch man would have evolved as a being who in every impulse
of his astral body would have obeyed the influences of certain spiritual Beings of a higher
rank than himself; these Beings would have retained their sway over him until the middle
of the Atlantean epoch. If that had happened, man's faculties of perception and cognition

would not have been directed to the material world until a much later period. During the
Lemurian and early Atlantean epochs, no passions, no desires would have arisen from his
sense-perceptions; he would have confronted the world of sense as it were in a state of
innocence, obedient in his every action to the impulses instilled into him by higher
spiritual Beings. The instincts prompting him to action would not have been of exactly
the same nature as those of the higher animals to-day, but more spiritual. His every deed
on earth would have been prompted, not by mere impulses, but by a kind of spiritual
instinct. As things were, under the influence of Lucifer man came earlier to the stage
where he said: This delights and attracts me, that is repellent to me! He reached the stage
of following his own impulses earlier than would otherwise have been the case; he
became an independent being, with a measure of inner freedom. The consequence was
that he was detached in a certain way from the spiritual world. To put it concisely, one
might say: Without this influence of Lucifer, man would have remained a spiritualized
animal - an animal who would gradually have developed a form nobler and more
beautiful than could have been developed by man under the influence of Lucifer. Man
would have remained far more of an angelic being if Lucifer's influence had not taken
effect in the Lemurian epoch; but on the other hand, the higher Beings would have guided
him as it were on leading-strings. In the middle of the Atlantean epoch something would
have befallen him suddenly: his eyes would have been fully opened, the tapestry of the
whole material world of sense would have lain around him - but gazing upon it he would
simultaneously have perceived the Divine-Spiritual, a Divine- Spiritual world behind
every physical object. If, therefore, in his former state of dependence man had looked
back into the bosom of the Divine whence he had proceeded, beholding the Gods of Light
sending their radiance into his soul, guiding and leading him, something would have
come about for him - this is not a mere picture but corresponds in a high degree with the
reality - namely, that the world of sense in its entirety would have been outspread in
transparency before him, revealing behind it those other Divine-Spiritual Beings who had
taken the place of what had now been lost. One spiritual world would have closed behind
him and a new spiritual world opened before him. Man would have remained a child in
the hands of higher, Divine- Spiritual Beings; independence would not have been
established in the human soul.

It did not happen so, because Lucifer had approached man and made part of the
underlying spiritual world invisible to him. The personal instincts, passions and desires
which arose in the human astral body spread a cloud of darkness over the spiritual Beings
of the world out of which man is born and who would otherwise have remained
perpetually visible to him.

Hence in those great centers of the Oracles in ancient Atlantis the Initiates had expressly
trained themselves to behold that part of the spiritual world which had been concealed as
the result of Lucifer's influence. The aim of all the preparation undergone by the
guardians and pupils of the ancient Oracles in the Atlantean Mysteries was to enable
them to perceive that part of the spiritual world of light which in consequence of Lucifer's
influence upon the astral body of man had withdrawn from his field of vision. And visible
too, were those figures seen by man in the various conditions of soul running parallel
with initiation, figures which from a world of Light penetrate into our world decked in
the raiment provided by the astral world. In the ancient Oracle centers the Atlantean
Initiate beheld in the spirit those figures who were in truth spiritual Beings of a higher
rank than he - Beings who had not descended into the physical world and who had
therefore remained invisible to ordinary sight when man's eyes were opened prematurely.
But since Lucifer himself was an opponent of these worlds of Light, it was inevitable that
he too should be visible to the initiates; and the hosts of Lucifer were visible to the
Atlanteans who in their shadowy, clairvoyant consciousness, in the sleeping state and in
conditions midway between sleeping and waking, could be transported into the spiritual
world. When part of the world of Light was accessible to these Atlantean men, part of the
world opposing the world of Light was also visible; the Luciferic hosts were visible - not
Lucifer himself. These noble figures belonging to the world of light were as fascinating
and splendid in their astral raiment as those of the opposing world of deception were
fearsome and terrible.

Thus it was the influence of Lucifer in the evolution of humanity that made it possible for
man to fall into error and evil but also to attain freedom. Had there been no Luciferic

influence, the conditions I have been describing to you would have come about in the
middle of the Atlantean epoch: the tapestry of the sense-world would have been
outspread before man; the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms would have been
materially visible to him; also the phenomena of nature and of the heavens, thunder,
lightning, clouds, air - all would have been visible to external sight. But behind it all
would have been the unmistakable presence of Divine-Spiritual Beings. Because
Lucifer's influence had already taken effect in man's astral body, his physical body - at
that time still transmutable - had been so prepared ever since the Lemurian epoch and on
into the Atlantean, that it could not become the direct instrument for the physical world of
sense with the spiritual world visibly behind it. And so man could not immediately
behold the physical sense- world in the form in which it would simultaneously have
revealed itself to him as a spiritual world. The three lower kingdoms of nature lay around
him; the physical world became a veil over the spiritual world. Man could not, nor can he
to this day, see directly into the spiritual world.

But because man had passed through this evolution, a different influence was able to
assert itself in the middle of the Atlantean epoch - an influence from quite another side
and not to be confused with that of Lucifer and his hosts. Although it was Lucifer who
first made it possible for man to come under the sway of this other influence, although it
was Lucifer who caused the human physical body to become denser than it would
otherwise have become, nevertheless it was necessary for yet another influence to
approach man in order to bring him completely into the material world of sense, in order
to shut him off entirely from the spiritual world so that he was led to the illusion: There is
no other world than the world of material existence outspread before me!

From the middle of the Atlantean epoch an opponent quite different in character from
Lucifer approached man, namely the Being who casts such mist and darkness around his
faculties of perception that he makes no effort nor unfolds any urge to fathom the secrets
of the world of sense. If you picture to yourselves that under Lucifer's influence the
sense- world became like a veil, through the influence of this second Being the physical
world in its totality became like a dense rind, closing off the spiritual world. It was only

the Atlantean Initiates who were able, through the preparation they had undergone, to
pierce this dense covering of the material, physical world.

The Powers who approached man in order to obscure his vision of the other side of divine
existence are brought to our notice for the first time in the teachings given to his
followers and pupils by Zarathustra, the great leader of the ancient Persians. The mission
of Zarathustra was to instill culture into a people who, unlike the ancient Indians, did not
by nature yearn perpetually for the spiritual world. Zarathustra's mission was to impart to
his people a culture directed to the world of sense, aiming at mastery of the material
world through means dependent upon the efforts and labors of physical man. In the
civilization of ancient Persia, therefore, man was less subject to the influence of Lucifer
than to the influence of that Being who since the middle of the Atlantean epoch had
approached mankind, with the result that many of the Initiates at that time had lapsed into
the practice of a form of black magic; having been led astray by this tempter, they
misused for the purposes of the physical-material world what was accessible to them
from the spiritual world. The mighty influence of the forces of black magic which finally
led to the destruction of Atlantis had its origin in the temptations of that Being whom
Zarathustra taught his people to know as Ahriman ('Angra Mainyu"), the Being who
opposed the God of Light proclaimed by Zarathustra as " Ahura Mazdao", the "Great
Aura".

These two figures - Lucifer and Ahriman - must be clearly distinguished from each other.
For Lucifer is a Being who detached himself from the spiritual hosts of heaven after the
separation of the sun, whereas Ahriman had already broken away before the separation of
the sun and is an embodiment of quite different powers. The result of Lucifer's influence
in the Lemurian epoch was merely the corruption of the faculty, still possessed by man in
the Atlantean epoch, to manipulate the forces of air and water. In the book entitled From
the Akasha Chronicle you will have read that in Atlantean times the seminal forces in
plant and animal were still at man's command and could be drawn forth just as the forces
used in the form of steam for propelling machines can be extracted from mineral coal to-
day. I have told you that when these forces are drawn forth they are connected in a

mysterious way with the nature-forces in wind, weather and the like; and if applied by
man for purposes running counter to the divine purposes, these nature-forces are called
into action against him.

Here lies the cause of the Atlantean flood and of the devastation wrought by the powers
of nature which led to the disappearance of the whole continent of Atlantis. But even
before that time, man had lost command over the forces of fire and the power to ally them
with certain mysterious forces of the earth. Power over the forces of fire and earth in a
certain combination had already been withdrawn from man. But now - through the
influence of Ahriman and his accomplices - he again acquired a certain mastery over the
forces of fire and earth, with dire consequences. And much that is to be heard about the
use of fire in ancient Persia is connected with what I am now telling you. Many forces
that are applied in black magic and are connected with it, lead to the result that man lays
hold of forces of an entirely different nature and thus gains an influence over fire and
earth, with terrible and devastating results. The practice of black magic by the
descendants of the Atlanteans in ancient Persia would still have been effective had not the
teachings of Zarathustra revealed how Ahriman, as an opposing power, ensnares man and
clouds his vision of the spiritual reality behind the world of sense. Thus through
Zarathustra and his followers, influence was brought to bear upon a large part of Post-
Atlantean civilization; on the one hand men were taught of the workings of the sublime
God of Light to whom they may turn, and, on the other, of the malefic power of Ahriman
and his hosts.

Ahriman works upon man in countless, infinitely diverse ways. - 1 have told you that the
Event of the Mystery of Golgotha was a moment of supreme importance for the evolution
of the world. The Christ appeared in the realm into which man enters after death, where
Ahriman's influence was even mightier than in the world around man here on earth
between birth and death. In the realm of existence between death and rebirth, Ahriman's
influences worked upon man with terrible, overwhelming power. And if nothing else had
taken place, utter darkness would gradually have closed in upon man in the 'realm of
Shades' - as it was correctly designated by the ancient Greeks. A condition of complete

isolation, leading to the intensification of egoism would have set in between death and
rebirth; man would have been born into his new life as a gross and overweening egotist.
Hence it is more than a figure of speech to say that after the Event of Golgotha, at the
moment when the Blood flowed from the wounds, the Christ appeared in yonder world,
in the realm of the Shades, and cast Ahriman into fetters. Although Ahriman's influence
remained and is really the origin of all materialistic thinking on the part of man, although
this influence can be paralyzed only if men receive into themselves the power emanating
from the Mystery of Golgotha, nevertheless they can draw from that Event a power
which enables them to find their way once again into the Divine- Spiritual world.
Thus it was to Ahriman that the faculty of human cognition was primarily directed.
Ahriman was a Being whose existence was divined by men, a Being of whom they had
some knowledge through the culture inaugurated by Zarathustra; and from there the
knowledge of Ahriman spread among the other peoples and into their world of ideas.
Ahriman with his hosts appears as a figure with the most diverse names among the
civilized peoples. And owing to the peculiar conditions obtaining in the souls of the
European peoples who had remained farthest in the rear of the migrations from West to
East, who had been less affected than the others by what had transpired in the ancient
Indian, ancient Persian, Egyptian and even in the Greco-Latin civilizations - owing to
these circumstances there prevailed among the European peoples from whom the Fifth
Epoch of culture was to be born, an attitude of soul which regarded Ahriman alone as a
figure of dread. And while many different names were adopted - as for example,
"Mephistopheles" among the Hebrew people - in Europe the figure of Ahriman became
the "Devil" in his various forms.

Obviously, therefore, we are gazing here into a concatenation of happenings in the
spiritual worlds and many a man who claims to be above medieval superstitions will do
well to remember the words in Faust:

"The little folk ne'er scent the DevilE'en though he have them by the collar" .

It is precisely because man closes his spiritual eyes to this influence that he succumbs to

it so completely. Goethe's "Mephistopheles" is none other than the figure of Ahriman and
must not be confused with Lucifer. All the errors cropping up here and there in
commentaries on Faust originate from this confusion - although it was indeed Lucifer
who first paved the way for Ahriman's influence. In studying Ahriman one is therefore
led back to an original influence of Lucifer, the nature of which can only become clear
after long preparatory efforts have been made to understand this intimate connection.
The subtle difference between the two Beings must not be overlooked. The essential
point is that, fundamentally speaking, Lucifer had brought man under the influence of the
powers connected with air and water only; whereas it was Ahriman-Mephistopheles who
has subjected him to the influence of far more deadly powers and the civilizations
immediately to come will see the appearance of many things connected with Ahriman's
influence. Through this influence the seeker for the spirit who does not stand upon firm
and sure foundations can readily fall prey to the most terrible illusion and deception. For
Ahriman is a spirit who sets out to spread deception as to the true nature of the sense-
world, especially as an expression of the spiritual world. When a man has a tendency to
abnormal, somnambulistic states or through certain wrongful training awakens occult
forces whereby egoism is intensified, then Ahriman or Mephistopheles has a ready
influence precisely upon these occult forces, an influence that can soon become
overwhelmingly powerful. Whereas Lucifer's influence can only bring it about that what
confronts a man from the spiritual world (and this applies also to one who is receiving
wrongful training) appears to him as an astral form visible to the astral body, the
manifestations due to the influence of Ahriman are brought to light in that the evil
influences on the physical body press through into the etheric body and then become
visible as phantoms.

In the influences of Ahriman, therefore, we have to do with powers of a much lower
nature than the influences of Lucifer. Lucifer's influences can never become as evil as the
influences of Ahriman and of those Beings who are connected with the powers of fire.
The influence of Ahriman or Mephistopheles can bring it about that in order to attain
occult knowledge a man is induced, for example, to undertake certain measures with his
physical body. The method that consists in the use and misuse of the physical body is the

most evil that can possibly be applied for the purpose of acquiring occult powers. It is a
fact that in certain school of black magic such practices are taught in abundance. One of
the most terrible perversions to which man may be subject occurs when the forces of the
physical body are taken as the starting-point for occult training.

It is not possible here to enter into closer detail than the indication that all machinations
consisting in any way of a misuse of the forces of the physical body emanate from the
influences of Ahriman; and because the effect of this penetrates into man's etheric body,
it works as a world of phantoms that is nothing else than the garment of powers which
drag man down to a level below that of true manhood. Nearly every ancient civilization -
the Indian, the Persian, the Egyptian, the Greco-Latin - had its period of decadence; so
too the Mysteries, when the Mystery-traditions were no longer preserved in their purity.
During these periods many of those who were either pupils of the Initiates but unable to
remain at their level or men to whom the secrets of the Mysteries had been unlawfully
betrayed, had fallen into perverse and evil paths. Centers of black magic and its forces
originated from these influences and have persisted to this day.

Ahriman is a spirit of lies, a spirit who conjures illusions before men, working together
with his confederates in a spiritual world. Ahriman himself is no mirage - far from it! But
what is conjured before men's eyes of spirit under his influence - that is mirage, illusion.
When a man's desires and passions flow along evil paths and at the same time he lends
himself in any way to occult practices, then the occult forces which are awakened
penetrate into the etheric body and the most evil powers of corruption appear among the
illusory images which may themselves often be majestic, awe-inspiring. Such is the
terrible influence of Ahriman upon man.

From what has been said you can gather that through Christ's Coming, Ahriman has been
cast into fetters - if this expression may be used - but only, of course, for those who
endeavor unceasingly to fathom the Christ-Mystery. And outside the forces streaming
from the Christ-Mystery, protection in the world against the influence of Ahriman will
steadily diminish. In a certain sense - and many signs proclaim it - our epoch courts these

influences of Ahriman. In certain occult teachings the hosts of Ahriman are also called
the Asuras. These are of course, the evil Asuras who at a certain time fell away from the
evolutionary path of the Asuras who endowed man with personality. It has already been
indicated that these are spiritual Beings who detached themselves from the evolution of
the earth before the separation of the sun.

Up to now we have been describing merely the terrible influence that Ahriman can
exercise upon a certain abnormal process of development, one that proceeds along occult
paths. But in a certain respect the whole of mankind came under the influence of
Ahriman during the second half of the Atlantean epoch. The whole Post-Atlantean epoch
has within it, in a certain sense, the aftermath of Ahriman's influence - in one region of
the earth more, in another less. But Ahriman's influence has asserted itself everywhere
and all the teachings given to the peoples by the ancient Initiates concerning the Spirits of
Light who are the opponents of Ahriman were given primarily in order to draw these
peoples away from Ahriman's influence. It was a good, wisely led education of mankind.
But let us not forget that since that time the destiny of Ahriman has been interwoven in a
certain sense with the destiny of humanity, and manifold happenings, of which the
uninitiated can know nothing, keep the whole karma of humanity in perpetual connection
with the karma of Ahriman. To understand what will now be said, we must realize that
over and above the karma which belongs to every individual human being, there is at
every stage of existence a universal karmic law. All the categories of beings have their
karma - the karma of the one differing from that of the other. But karma operates through
every realm of existence and there are things in the karma of mankind, in the karma of a
people, of a community or other group of human beings, which must be regarded as
collective karma, so that in certain circumstances the individual can be drawn into the
sway of the collective karma. It will not always be easy for one who cannot penetrate to
the root of the matter to discern exactly where the influences of the powers concerned lie
in the case of human beings overtaken by such a destiny. An individual within some
community may well be entirely guiltless as far as his own karma is concerned; but
because he stands within a field of collective karma, calamity may befall him. If,
however, he is entirely guiltless, compensation will be made in later incarnations.

In the wider connection we must look not only at the karma of the past but also think of
the karma of the future. A terrible fate may befall a whole group of human beings; the
reason why just this group should suffer such a destiny is not to be discovered. Someone
who might be capable of investigating the karma of an individual will in certain
circumstances be unable to find anything at all that could have led to this tragic fate, for
the threads of karma are extremely complicated The cause of such karmic happenings
may lie far, far away - but it is connected with these people nevertheless. And it may be
that the whole group, while guiltless, has been overtaken by some collective karma which
could not overtake those immediately guilty, because circumstances did not make this
possible. In such cases the only thing that can be said is this: In the total karma of an
individual, everything is ultimately balanced out, including what befalls him without guilt
on his part; it is all inscribed in his karma and compensation in the fullest sense will be
made in future time. - Therefore in considering the law of karma we must also take into
account the karma of the future. Nor must it be forgotten that man is not an isolated being
but that every individual has to share jointly in the collective karma of humanity. We
must remember, too, that man, together with humanity, is connected with those
hierarchies of Beings who have not entered into the physical world and that he is also
drawn into the karma of the hierarchies. In the destinies of mankind in the spiritual world
a great deal appears the connections of which are not to be sought in the immediate
circumstances, but the karmic consequences come to pass inevitably. Since the second
half of the Atlantean epoch, Ahriman's karma has been linked with the karma of
mankind. Where, then, are the deeds of Ahriman, over and above what is wrought by him
in the bodies of men in order to spread phantoms and illusion over the world of sense?
Where are these other deeds?

Everything in the world has, as it were, two sides, one pertaining more to man as a
spiritual being, the other to what has developed as the kingdoms of nature around him.
The earth is the arena of man's existence. To the eye of spirit this earth is revealed as a
combination of different layers or strata. The outermost stratum is called the "Mineral
Earth" or "Mineral Stratum" because it contains only such substances as are to be found
in the ground under our feet. This is the shallowest stratum, relatively speaking. Then

begins the "Fluidic Earth", the material constitution of which is entirely different from
that of the "mineral" stratum above it. This second stratum is, as it were, endowed with
inner life; and only because the solid, mineral stratum is spread over it are the inner
forces of this second stratum held together. If they were released they would
instantaneously disperse into cosmic space. This stratum, therefore, lies under
tremendous pressure. A third stratum is the "Vapor Earth". It is not a material vapor such
as arises on the earth's surface but in this third stratum the substance itself is imbued with
inner forces, comparable only with the passions, the inner urges and impulses of man.
Whereas on the earth it is only beings like animals and men who can unfold passions, this
third stratum - just as the substances of the earth are permeated by forces of magnetism
and warmth - is permeated in a material sense with forces similar to those we know as
human and animal passions and impulses. The fourth or "Form Stratum" is so designated
because it contains the material and the forces of what are encountered in the mineral part
of the earth as entities cast into form. And the characteristic of the fifth stratum, or
"Fertility Earth" is that even as material it teems with infinite fertility. If you were to get
hold of part of this stratum it would perpetually be sending forth new impulses, new
sproutings; rampant fertility is the intrinsic quality of this stratum. Then we come to the
sixth stratum, the "Fire Earth", containing as "substances" within it, forces that can bring
about terrible havoc and destruction. It is actually into these forces that the primordial
Fire has been banished.

In and from this stratum the realm of Ahriman operates - in a material sense. What
manifests in the phenomena of outer nature, in air and water, in cloud formations, in
lightning and thunder - all this is, so to speak, a last vestige on the earth's surface, of
forces that were already connected with ancient Saturn and separated from the earth
together with the sun. By what is working in these forces, the inner fire-forces of the
earth are placed in the service of Ahriman. There he has the center of his activity; and
whereas his spiritual influences make their way to the souls of men and lead them to
error, we see how Ahriman - in a certain respect shackled - has certain foci for his
activity in the interior of the earth. Were we to understand the mysterious connections of
what has come to pass on the earth under Ahriman's influence and what Ahriman's own

karma has become in consequence of this, we should recognize in the quakes and tremors
of the earth the connection between such grievous, tragic happenings in nature and the
power that holds sway on the earth. These manifestations are something that has
remained since ancient times as a reaction on the earth against the good Beings of Light.
Thus forces allied with the Beings who were thrust away from their connection with the
earth at the time when the good Beings of light established the beneficent phenomena
around the earth-globe, are active, and in a certain sense we can recognize the echoings
of these fire-forces which in earlier times were withdrawn from man's control, in what is
wrought by fire in such terrible manifestations of nature. Although the karma of Ahriman
has been linked with that of humanity since the time of Atlantis, the suggestion should
not arise that any guilt is to be attributed to those who are victims of what Ahriman's
karma has evoked. Such happenings are connected with the collective karma of humanity
in which the individual has also to share. The causes which produce their effects in
particular localities as the workings of Ahriman's karma often lie somewhere else
entirely. It is however these particular places which afford the necessary opportunity.
There we see a connection which seems to be like a relic of catastrophes undergone by
humanity in the far distant past. The power to work upon fire which man had formerly
possessed, was withdrawn from him. Hence ancient Lemuria was brought to its
destruction by the fire of the passions of men. The same fire that is now below was then
above; it receded from the earth's surface and the same fire that issued as a kind of extract
from the primordial fire is the inorganic, mineral fire of to-day. So too it was with the
forces working through air and water which, again by way of the passions of men, led to
the Atlantean catastrophes. These catastrophes were evoked by the collective karma of
humanity but a relic has remained and this relic awakens the echoes of those earlier
catastrophes. Our volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are nothing else than the echoes of
these catastrophes. But it should never so much as occur to anyone to attach an iota of
guilt to the victim of such a calamity or to withhold compassion in the fullest measure. It
must be absolutely clear to an anthroposophist that the karma of these individuals has
nothing to do with the guilt to which the catastrophes are due and it should never occur to
him to withhold help from anyone because - to put it trivially - he believes in karma and
therefore assumes that this destiny was brought on by the man himself. Karma demands

of us that we help human beings because we may be sure that our help means something
that is written in their karma and will turn that karma in a more favorable direction.
Understanding that is based upon the recognition of karma must necessarily lead to
compassion; our compassion for the victims of such catastrophes will be all the greater,
for our knowledge tells us that there is a collective karma of humanity from which the
individual members have to suffer, that just as such happenings are brought about by
humanity as one whole, so too must humanity be answerable for them; we must regard
such a destiny as our own and help not only out of a spontaneous impulse but because we
know that we are involved in the karma of humanity and share the guilt incurred!
A question was handed to me this morning about earthquake catastrophes. The question
runs as follows: "What is the occult explanation of earthquakes? Can they be foreseen? If
particular catastrophes can be foreseen, why should it not be possible to give some
warning beforehand? Such a warning might possibly be ineffective the first time but
certainly not on another occasion."

You may remember something of what was said at the end of the lecture on the interior
of the earth about the possibility of earthquakes. We will not consider that now but enter
directly into this question. In reality it has two sides. The one is: Whether from the occult
connections which can be discerned, earthquakes can be foreseen? The answer to this is
that the knowledge of such matters belongs to the deepest realm of occult science. In
respect of a particular event on the earth, an event with roots as deeply laid as those
described to-day, and connected with causes extending widely over the earth - in respect
of such an event it is absolutely correct to say that even in a particular case an indication
of time can be given. It would certainly be possible for the occultist to give such an
indication. But the other side of the question is: whether it is permissible for such
indications to be given? - For one who confronts the occult secrets from outside it will
seem almost a matter of course that the answer will be "Yes !" And yet the truth is that in
regard to such events it is actually only twice or three times in any one century - at the
very most, twice or three times - that any prediction can be announced from the centers of
Initiation. For you must remember that these things are connected with the karma of
humanity as a whole and if, for example, they were avoided in one instance they would

inevitably occur in some other place and in a different form. The prediction itself would
alter nothing. And just think what a terrible encroachment it would be into the karma of
the earth as a whole if human measures were adopted to prevent such happenings. The
reaction would be so fearful, so violent, that only in very rare and exceptional cases
would a high Initiate, foreseeing an earthquake, be able to make use of his knowledge to
help himself or those near him. With full knowledge he would have to face his end, as a
matter of course! For these things that have been implicit in the karma of humanity for
thousands and millions of years cannot be paralyzed by measures adopted during one
brief period of evolution. - But there is still more to add.

It has been said already that this very subject is one of the most difficult of all in occult
investigation. It is far easier to know something about the astral world, the devachanic
world, even about the farthest planets, than about the interior of the earth. Most things
one hears are the purest trash, because, as I say, it is one of the most difficult subjects in
occultism. The same is true of matters that are connected with these elemental
catastrophes. And above all you must realize that clairvoyance is not a matter of just
sitting down, inducing a particular condition, and then being able to say what is going on
in the whole universe, up to the highest spheres. It is by no means so. To believe any such
thing would be as "clever" as to say: "You have the faculty of perception in the physical
world; but why was it that when 12 o clock came and you were sitting in your room, you
were neither astonished by nor did you see what happened outside by the River Spree at
that hour?" There are hindrances to seership. If the seer in question had gone for a walk at
12 o'clock he would probably have seen what happened. It is not the case that all worlds
are immediately disclosed through the mere resolve to induce in oneself the requisite
condition. The seer has to find his way to the events and investigate them, and these
investigations are of the most difficult kind because the hindrances are greatest. - And
perhaps at this point something may be said about these hindrances.

If a man is able to walk about on his two legs, you can deprive him of this faculty not
only by amputating his legs but also by shutting him up in a cell; then he can no longer
walk about. In the same way there are hindrances to occult investigation and in the

domain of which we are speaking they are immensely powerful. I will tell you one of the
main hindrances and in doing so introduce you to a mysterious relationship. The greatest
hindrance to occult investigation in this domain is constituted by the methods and trend
of modern materialistic science. The countless illusions and fallacies accumulating in
materialistic science to-day, all the research that is not only futile but is prompted by the
vanities of men - these are things which in their effects in the higher worlds make
investigation into these manifestations and free vision in the higher world impossible or
to say the least, extremely difficult. Free vision is clouded as a result of the materialistic
research pursued here on earth. It is by no means easy to get to the root of these things.
But only wait for the time when spiritual science has become more widespread and when
through its influence the materialistic superstitions prevailing in our world will be swept
away! Once the nonsensical analogies and hypotheses leading to all kinds of conjectures
about the interior of the earth are cast aside, you will see that when spiritual science has
itself been integrated into the karma of humanity, when it finds the way to men's souls
and is able from there to overcome the opposing powers and materialistic superstitions,
when further research can be made into all that is connected with the bitterest foe of
mankind, that Being who fetters man's vision within the world of sense - you will see that
it will then be possible, even externally, to influence the karma of humanity in the sense
that the dire results of such happenings may be alleviated. The reason why the Initiates
must be silent about happenings connected with the great karma of humanity is to be
found in the materialistic superstitions of men. Many scientific pursuits are in no way
imbued with the Faustian striving for truth but prompted entirely by vanity and ambition.
How much scientific research is promoted in the world simply because an individual is
seeking for something that will be to his personal advantage! If you sum up all these
things you will realize the strength of the force that obstructs vision into the world behind
the external phenomena of the material world. Not until this fog has been cleared away
will the time come when, in respect of certain mysterious manifestations of nature
emanating from the foes of mankind and trespassing deeply into human life, it will be
possible for help - and then in no small measure - to be given to mankind. Until that time
comes there is no such possibility.

I am well aware that these questions have been given a turn not always in the mind of the
one who asks them. But it is often the fate of occult science to be obliged to formulate the
questions in the right way before they can be correctly answered. Again do not take this
to mean that the mysterious connection between earthquakes and the karma of humanity
is a secret that cannot be investigated. It can be investigated but there are reasons why
only the most commonplace aspects of such questions can be presented to the world to-
day. Let the knowledge reach mankind through spiritual science that there is a connection
between the deeds of men and happenings in nature and then the time will come when
these things can be answered in the way the question demands. Spiritual science may
pass through many destinies; its influence may even be crippled, remaining within
narrow and restricted circles. Nevertheless it will make its way through mankind, will be
integrated into the karma of humanity, and then the possibility will be created for
individuals themselves to have an effect upon the karma of humanity as a whole.

Search for the New Isis, the Divine Sophia: The Quest for the Isis-Sophia

A lecture by Rudolf SteinerDornach, December 24, 1920GA 202

IN THE FESTIVAL of Christmas something is given to Christendom that directs the
thoughts of all circles of Christian people straight to the very deepest questions presented
by the evolution of humankind upon earth. Regard the evolution of history from whatever
point of view you will, take into consideration historical events in order to understand
human evolution, to penetrate the meaning of human evolution on earth - in all history
you will find no thought as widely understandable or having as much power to lift the
soul to this mystery of human evolution as the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha, as the
thought that is contained in the festival of Christmas.

When we look back upon the beginning of human evolution on earth, and follow it
through the thousands of years that preceded the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that,
although the achievements of the peoples in all the various nations were so great,
nevertheless, in reality all these achievements constituted only a kind of preparation -
they were a preparatory step toward what took place for the sake of humankind at the
Mystery of Golgotha. Furthermore, we find we can only understand what has happened
since the Mystery of Golgotha when we remember that the Christ who went through the
Mystery of Golgotha has played an active role in the evolution of humanity ever since.
Many things in human evolution may at first appear incomprehensible. However, if we
investigate them without narrow-minded superstition, for example the kind of
superstition that believes that unknown gods should come to the aid of human beings
without their active involvement, and that such aid should come just where human beings
consider it necessary - if we leave aside such views, we find that even the most painful
events in the course of world history can show us the significance and meaning that the
evolution of the earth has acquired through the fact that Christ went through the Mystery
of Golgotha. It is appropriate for us to study this Mystery of Golgotha - and the mystery
of Christmas belongs to it - from a point of view which can reveal, as it were, the
meaning of all of earthly humanity. We know how intimate the connection is between

what takes place in the moral- spiritual sphere of human evolution and what takes place in
nature. And with a certain understanding of this link between nature and the world's
moral order we can approach also another relationship with which we have been
concerned for many years - namely, the relationship of Christ Jesus to that being whose
outer reflection appears in the sun. The followers and representatives of the Christian
impulse were not always so hostile toward the recognition of this connection between the
mystery of the sun and the mystery of Christ as the decadent present-day representatives
of Christianity so often are. Dionysius the Areopagite, whom we have often mentioned,
calls the sun God's monument, and in Augustine we continually find such allusions. Even
in Scholasticism we find such references to the fact that the outwardly visible stars and
their movements are images of the divine- spiritual existence of the world.

However, we must understand the mystery of Christmas in a far wider context, if we wish
to understand what should concern us most of all in view of the important tasks of the
present age. I would like to remind you of something which I have repeatedly brought
forward in various ways in the course of many years. I have told you: We look back into
the first post-Atlantean age, which was filled with the deeds and experiences of the
ancient Indian people; we look back into the ancient Persian epoch of post-Atlantean
humanity, into the Egypto-Chaldean, and into the Greco-Latin. We come then to the fifth
epoch of the post-Atlantean humanity, our own. Our epoch will be followed by the sixth
and by the seventh. And I have drawn your attention to the fact that the Greco-Latin, the
fourth epoch of post-Atlantean humanity, stands, as it were, in the middle, and that there
are certain connections (you can read of this in my little book The Spiritual Guidance of
the Individual and Humanity) between the third and the fifth epochs, that is, between the
Egypto-Chaldean epoch and our own. Furthermore there is also a certain connection
between the ancient Persian epoch and the sixth, and between the ancient Indian and the
seventh epoch of post-Atlantean humanity. Specific things repeat themselves in a certain
way in each of these epochs of life.

I once pointed out that the great Kepler, the successor of Copernicus, had a feeling that
his solar and planetary system was repeating, of course in a way appropriate to the fifth

post-Atlantean age, what had lived as the world picture behind the Egyptian priest
mysteries. Kepler himself expressed this in a certain sense very radically when he said
that he had borrowed the vessels of the ancient Egyptian teachers of wisdom in order to
carry them over into the new age.

Today, however, we will consider something which stood, in a sense, at the center of the
view found in the cultic rituals performed by the priests in the Egyptian mystery religion;
we will consider the mysteries of Isis. In order to call up before our minds the spiritual
connection between the mystery of Isis and that which also lives in Christianity, we need
only look with the eyes of the soul upon Raphael's famous picture of the Sistine
Madonna. The Virgin is holding the child Jesus, and behind her are the clouds,
representing a multitude of children. We can imagine the Virgin receiving the child Jesus
descending through the clouds, through a condensation, as it were, of the thin cloud
substance. Created out of an entirely Christian spirit, this picture is, after all, nothing
more than a kind of repetition of what the Egyptian mysteries of Isis revered when they
portrayed Isis holding the child Horus. The motif of that earlier picture is in complete
harmony with that of Raphael's picture. Of course, this fact must not tempt us to a
superficial interpretation, common among many people since the eighteenth century and
throughout the nineteenth century right up to our own days - namely, to see the story of
Christ Jesus and all that belongs to it as a mere metamorphosis, a transformation, of
ancient pagan mysteries. From my book Christianity as Mystical Fact you already know
how these things are to be understood. However, in the sense explained in that book we
are permitted to point out a spiritual congruence between what appears in Christianity
and the old pagan mysteries.

The main content of the mystery of Isis is the death of Osiris and Isis's search for the
dead Osiris. We know that Osiris, the representative of the being of the sun, the
representative of the spiritual sun, is killed by Typhon, who, expressed in Egyptian terms,
is none other than Ahriman. Ahriman kills Osiris, throws him into the Nile, and the Nile
carries the body away. Isis, the spouse of Osiris, sets out on her search and finds him over
in Asia. She brings him back to Egypt, where Ahriman, the enemy, cuts the body into

fourteen parts. Isis buries these fourteen parts in various locations, so that they belong to
the earth for ever after.

We can see from this story how Egyptian wisdom conceived of the connection between
the powers of heaven and the powers of earth in a deeply meaningful way. On the one
hand, Osiris is the representative of the powers of the sun. After having passed through
death he is, in various places and simultaneously, the force that ripens everything that
grows out of the earth. The ancient Egyptian sage imagines in a spirit-filled way how the
powers which shine down from the sun, enter the earth and then become part of the earth,
and how, as powers of the sun buried in the earth, they then hand over to the human being
what matures out of the earth. The Egyptian myth is founded upon the story of Osiris -
how he was killed, how his spouse Isis had to set out on her search for him, how she first
brought him back to Egypt and how he then became active in another form, namely, from
out of the earth.

One of the Egyptian pyramids depicts the whole event in a particularly meaningful way.
The Egyptians not only recorded what they knew as the solution to the great secrets of the
universe in their own particular writing, they also expressed it in their architectural
constructions. They built one of these pyramids with such mathematical precision that the
shadow of the sun disappeared into the base of the pyramid at the spring equinox and
only reappeared at the autumn equinox. The Egyptians wanted to express in this pyramid
that the forces which shine down from the sun are buried from spring to fall in the earth
where they develop the forces of the earth, so that the earth may produce the fruit which
humankind needs.

This, then, is the idea we find present in the minds and hearts of the ancient Egyptians,
On the one hand, they look up to the sun, they look up to the lofty being of the sun and
they worship him. At the same time, however, they relate how this being of the sun was
lost in Osiris, and was sought by Isis, and how he was found again so that he is then able
to continue working in a changed way.

Many things which appeared in the Egyptian wisdom must be repeated in a different form
during our fifth post-Atlantean age. Humankind must increasingly come to understand
from a spiritual- scientific point of view the mysteries of the Egyptian priests in a form
appropriate to our own age, in a Christian sense. For the Egyptians, Osiris was a kind of
representative of the Christ who had not yet arrived on earth. In their own way they
looked upon Osiris as the being of the sun, but they imagined this sun being had been lost
in a sense, and must be found again. We cannot imagine that our being of the sun, the
Christ, who has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha could be lost to humankind, for
he came down from spiritual heights, united himself with the man Jesus of Nazareth, and
from then onwards remains with the earth. He is present, he exists, as the Christmas carol
proclaims each year anew: "Unto us a Saviour is born." It thereby expresses the eternal,
not the transitory nature of this event. Jesus was not only born once at Bethlehem, but is
born continuously; in other words, he remains with the life of the earth. What Christ is,
and what he means for us, cannot be lost.

But the Isis legend must show itself as being fulfilled in another way in our time. We
cannot lose the Christ and what he, in a higher form than Osiris, gives us; but we can
lose, and we have lost, what is portrayed for our Christian understanding standing at the
side of Osiris - Isis - the mother of the saviour, the divine wisdom, Sophia. If the Isis
legend is to be renewed, then it must not simply follow the old form - Osiris, killed by
Typhon-Ahriman and carried away by the waters of the Nile, must be found again by Isis
in order that his body, cut into pieces by Typhon-Ahriman, may be sunk into the earth.
No, in a sense, we must find the Isis legend again, the content of the mystery of Isis, but
we must create it out of imagination, suited to our own times. An understanding must
arise again of the eternal cosmic truths, and it will when we learn to think and compose
imaginatively, as the Egyptians did. But we must find the right Isis legend.

The Egyptian was permeated by Luciferic powers, as were all human beings who lived
before the Mystery of Golgotha. If Luciferic powers are within the human being and stir
the inner life, moving and weaving through it, the result will then be that Ahrimanic
powers will appear as an active force outside the human being. Thus the Egyptians, who

were themselves permeated by Lucifer, rightly see a picture of the world in which
Ahriman-Typhon is active.

Now, we must realize that modern humanity is permeated by Ahriman. Ahriman moves
and surges within human beings, just as Lucifer moved and surged within the Egyptian
world. However, when Ahriman works through Lucifer, then human beings see their
picture of the world in a Luciferic form. How does the human being see this picture of the
world? This Luciferic picture of the world has been created, it is here. It has become
increasingly popular for modern times and has taken hold of all circles of people who
want to consider themselves progressive and enlightened.

If the mystery of Christmas is to be understood, we must bear in mind that Lucifer is the
power wanting to retain the world-picture of an earlier stage. Lucifer is the power trying
to bring into the modern world-conception that which existed in earlier stages of human
development. He wants to give permanence to what existed in earlier periods. All that
was moral in earlier stages also exists of course today. (The significance of morality
always lies in the present, where, like seeds for the future, it provides the basis for the
creation of worlds yet to come.) But Lucifer strives to separate morality as such, all moral
forces, from our world picture. He allows the laws of natural necessity alone to appear in
our picture of the external world. Thus the impoverished human being of modern times is
presented with a wisdom of the world in which the stars move according to purely
mechanical necessity, in which the stars are devoid of morality, so that the moral
meaning of the world's order cannot be found in their movements. This, my dear friends,
is a purely Luciferic world picture.

Just as the Egyptians looked out into the world and saw Ahriman-Typhon as the one who
takes Osiris away from them, so too, we must look at our Luciferic world picture, at the
mathematical-mechanical world picture of modernday astronomy and other branches of
natural science, and realize that the Luciferic element holds sway in this world picture,
just as the typhonic-Ahrimanic element held sway in the Egyptian world picture. Just as
the ancient Egyptians saw their outer world picture in an Ahrimanic-typhonic light, so

modern human beings, because they are Ahrimanic, see it with Luciferic characteristics.
Lucifer is present, he is working there. Just as the Egyptians imagined Ahriman-Typhon
working in wind and weather, in the storms of winter, so modern human beings, if they
wish to truly understand the world, must imagine that Lucifer appears to them in the
sunshine and in the light of the stars, in the movements of the planets and of the moon.
The world picture of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler is a Luciferic construction.
Precisely because it arose from and corresponds to our Ahrimanic forces of knowledge,
its content - please distinguish here between method and content - is a Luciferic one.
When the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the divine Sophia, the wisdom that enables us
to see into the world with understanding, worked in a twofold way. Divine wisdom,
heavenly wisdom, worked in the revelation to the poor shepherds in the fields, and in the
revelation to them because of our new knowledge. We do not lack Christ; but the
knowledge of Christ, the Sophia of Christ, the Isis of Christ is lacking.

This is what we should engrave in our souls as a content of the mystery of Christmas. We
must realize that since the nineteenth century even theology has come to look upon Christ
merely as the man from Nazareth. That means that theology is completely permeated by
Lucifer. It no longer sees into the spiritual background of existence. External natural
science is Luciferic; theology is Luciferic. Of course if we are speaking of the inner
aspect of the human being as you can see from my previous words we could just as well
say that in this theology the human being is Ahrimanic. Then in the same way we must
say of the Egyptians that they were Luciferic, just as we say of them that their perception
of the external world was Ahrimanic. Modern human beings must understand the mystery
of Christmas in a new way. They must realize that they must first of all seek Isis, in order
that Christ may appear to them. The cause of our misfortunes and the problems of
modern civilization is not that we have lost Christ, who stands before us in a far greater
glory than Osiris did in the eyes of the Egyptians. It is not that we have lost him and need
to set out in search of him, armed with the force of Isis. No, what we have lost is the
knowledge of Christ Jesus, insight into his being. This is what we must find again with
the power of the Jesus Christ who is in us.

This is how we must look upon the content of the Christmas festival. For many modern
people Christmas is nothing more than a festival for giving and receiving presents,
something which they celebrate every year through habit. Like so many other things in
modern life the Christmas festival has become an empty phrase, And it is just because so
many things have become nothing more than a phrase that modern life is so full of
calamities and chaos.

This is in truth the deeper reason for the chaos in our modern life.

If in this our community, we could acquire the right feelings for everything which has
become mere phrases in the present age, and if these feelings could enable us to find the
impulses needed for the renewals that are so necessary, then this community, which calls
itself the anthroposophical community, would be worthy of its existence. This
community should understand the terrible significance for our age that such things as the
Christmas festival are carried forward as a mere phrase. We should be able to understand
that in the future this must not be allowed, and that these things must be given a new
content. Old habits must be left behind and new insights must take their place. If we
cannot find the inner courage needed to do this, then we share in the lie which keeps up
the yearly Christmas festival merely as a phrase, celebrating it without our souls feeling
and sensing the true significance of the event. Are we really lifted up to the highest
concerns of humanity when we give and receive presents every year out of habit at this
festival of Christ? Do we lift ourselves up to the highest concerns of humanity when we
listen to the words - which have also become a phrase - spoken by the representatives of
the various religious communities! We should forbid ourselves to continue in this inner
hollowness of our Christmas celebrations. We should make the inner decision to give
such a festival a content which allows the highest, worthiest feelings to pass through our
souls. Such a festival celebration would raise humankind to the comprehension of the
meaning of its existence.

Ask yourselves whether the feelings in your hearts and souls when you stand before the
Christmas tree and open the presents which are given out of habit, and the Christmas

cards containing the usual phrases - ask yourselves whether feelings are living in you that
can raise humankind to an understanding of the meaning of its evolution on earth! All the
problems and misfortune of our time are due to this - we cannot find the courage to lift
ourselves above the empty phrases of our age. But it must happen, a new content must
[be]come content which can give us entirely new feelings that stir us powerfully, just as
those people were stirred who were true Christians in the first Christian centuries, and
who felt the Mystery of Golgotha and the appearance of Christ as the highest which
humankind could experience upon the earth. Our souls must again acquire something of
this spirit.

Oh, the soul will attain to altogether new feelings if it feels committed to experience the
new Isis legend within modern humanity. Lucifer kills Isis and then places her body into
the infinity of space, which has become the grave of Isis, a mathematical abstraction.
Then comes the search for Isis, and her discovery, made possible through the inner force
of spiritual knowledge. In place of the heavens that have become dead, this knowledge
places what stars and planets reveal through an inner life, so that they then appear as
monuments to the spiritual powers that weave with power through space. We are able to
look at the manger today in the right way only if we experience in a unique way what is
weaving with spiritual power through space, and then look at that being who came into
the world through the child. We know that we bear this being within us, but we must also
understand him. Just as the Egyptians looked from Osiris to Isis, so we must learn to look
again to the new Isis, the holy Sophia. Christ will appear again in his spiritual form
during the course of the twentieth century, not through the arrival of external events
alone, but because human beings find the power represented by the holy Sophia. The
modern age has had the tendency to lose this power of Isis, this power of Mary. It has
been killed by all that arose with the modern consciousness of humankind. And the
confessions have in part exterminated just this view of Mary.

This is the mystery of modern humanity: Fundamentally speaking, Mary-Isis has been
killed, and she must be sought, just as Osiris was sought by Isis in Asia. But she must be
sought in the infinite spaces of the universe with the power that Christ can awaken in us,

if we devote ourselves to him in the right way.

Let us picture this rightly, let us immerse ourselves in this new Isis legend which must be
experienced, and let us fill our souls with it. Then we will experience in a true sense what
humankind in many of its representatives believes, that this new legend fills the holy eve
of Christmas, in order to bring us into Christmas day, the day of Christ. This
anthroposophical community could become a community of human beings united in love
because they feel the need, common to them all, to search. Let us become conscious of
this most intimate task! Let us go in spirit to the manger and bring to the Child our
sacrifice and our gift, which lie in the knowledge that something altogether new must fill
our souls, in order that we may fulfill the tasks which can lead humankind out of
barbarism into a truly new civilization.

To achieve this, of course, it is absolutely necessary that in our circles we are prepared to
help one another in love, so that a real community of souls arises in which all forms of
envy and the like disappear, and in which we do not look merely each at the other, but
together face the great goal we have in common. The mystery brought into the world by
the Christmas child also contains this - that we can look at a common goal without
discord because the common goal signifies union in harmony. The light of Christmas
should actually shine as a light of peace, as a light that brings external peace, only
because first of all it brings an inner peace into the hearts of human beings. We should
learn to say to ourselves: If we can manage to work together in love on the great tasks,
then, and only then, do we understand Christmas. If we cannot manage this, we do not
understand Christmas.

Let us remember that when we do sow discord, this discord hinders us in understanding
the one who appeared among human beings on the first Christmas on earth. Can we not
pour this mystery of Christmas into our souls, as something which unites our hearts in
love and harmony? If we do not properly understand what spiritual science is, then we
will not be able to do this. Nothing will come of this community if we merely bring into
it ideas and impulses we have picked up here and there from all corners of the world,

where cliches and routine hold sway. Let us remember that our community is facing a
difficult year, that all our forces must be gathered together, and let us celebrate Christmas
in this spirit. Oh, I would like to find words that could speak deeply into the heart of each
one of you on this evening. Then each one of you would feel that my words contain a
greeting which is at the same time an appeal to kindle spiritual science within your hearts,
so that it may become a power that can help humanity which is living under such terrible
oppression.

Beginning with such points of view, I have gathered the thoughts which I wished to speak
to you. Be assured that they are intended as a warm Christmas greeting for each one of
you, as something which can lead you into the new year in the very best way. In this
spirit, accept my words today as they were intended, as an affectionate Christmas
greeting.

Isis-Sophia Des Gottes Weisheit Sie hat Luzifer getotet Und auf der
Weltenkr*auml;fte Schwingen In Raumesweitenfortgetragen. Christus-Wollen In
Menschen werkend, - Es wird Luzzfer entreissen Und auf des Geisteswissens
Booten In Menschenseeten auferwecken Isis-Sophia Des Gottes Weisheit.
Isis-Sophia, Wisdom of God, she has slain Lucifer, And on the wings of the
powers of the world Carried her hence into the infinite space of the universe. The
willing of Christ Working in man Shall wrest from Lucifer And on the boats of
Spirit-knowledge Awaken in human souls Isis-Sophia Wisdom of God. This
translation edited for clarity

Search for the New Isis, the Divine Sophia: The Quest for the Isis-Sophia
The lecture presented here was given in Dornach on December 24, 1920, (Vol. 202 in the
Bibliographic Survey, 1961). Translated from the German by James H. Hindes.
Copyright © 1988This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of: The
Anthroposophic Press

The Etherisation of the Blood

The following lecture was given by Rudolf Steiner to an audience familiar with
the general background of his anthroposophical teachings. He constantly
emphasised the distinction between his written works and reports of lectures
which were given as oral communications and were not originally intended for
print. It should also be remembered that certain premises were taken for granted
when the words were spoken. "These premises," Rudolf Steiner writes in his
autobiography, "include at the very least the anthroposophical knowledge of Man
and of the Cosmos in its spiritual essence; also of what may be called
'anthroposophical history', told as an outcome of research into the spiritual
world."

The Etherisation of the Blood
A Lecture By Rudolf SteinerBasle, October 1, 1911GA 13

WHEREVER we, as human beings, have striven for knowledge, whether as mystics or
realists or in any way at all, the acquisition of self-knowledge has been demanded of us.
But as has been repeatedly emphasised on other occasions, self-knowledge is by no
means as easy to achieve as many people believe - anthroposophists sometimes among
them. The anthroposophist should be constantly aware of the hindrances he will
encounter in his efforts. But the acquisition of self-knowledge is absolutely essential if
we are to reach a worthy goal in world-existence and if our actions are to be worthy of us
as members of humanity.

Let us ask ourselves the question: Why is the achievement of self-knowledge so difficult?
Man is very a complicated being. If we mean to speak truly of his inner life, his life of
soul, we shall not begin by regarding it as something simple and elementary. We shall
rather have the patience and perseverance, the will, to penetrate more deeply into the
marvellous creation of the Divine-Spiritual Powers known to us as Man.

Before we investigate the nature of self-knowledge, two aspects of the life of the human
soul may present themselves to us. Just as the magnet has North and South poles, just as
light and darkness are present in the world, so there are two poles in man's life of soul.
These two poles become evident when we observe a person placed in two contrasting
situations. Suppose we are watching someone who is entirely absorbed in the
contemplation of some strikingly beautiful and impressive natural phenomenon. We see
how still he is standing, moving neither hand nor foot, never turning his eyes away from
the spectacle presented to him, and we are aware that inwardly he is picturing his
environment. That is one situation. Another is the following: a man is walking along the
street and feels that someone has insulted him. Without thinking, he is roused to anger
and gives vent to it by striking the person who insulted him. We are there witnessing a
manifestation of forces springing from anger, a manifestation of impulses of will, and it is
easy to imagine that if the action had been preceded by thought no blow need have been
struck. We have now pictured two contrasting situations: in the one there is only ideation,
a process in the life of thought from which all conscious will is absent; in the other there
is no thought, no ideation, and immediate expression is given to an impulse of will. Here
we have examples of the two extremes of human behaviour. The first pole is complete
surrender to contemplation, to thought, in which the will has no part; the second pole is
the impelling force of will without thought. These facts are revealed simply by
observation of external life.

We can go into these things more deeply and we come then into spheres in which we can
find our bearings only by summoning the findings of occult investigation to our aid. Here
another polarity confronts us - that of sleeping and waking. From the elementary concepts
of Anthroposophy we know that in waking life the four members of a man's being -
physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego - are organically and actively
interwoven, but that in sleep the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while the
astral body and ego are outpoured into the great world bordering on physical existence.
These facts could also be approached from a different point of view. We might ask: what
is there to be said about ideation, contemplation, thinking - and about the will and its

impulses on the one hand during waking life and during sleep on the other?

When we penetrate more deeply into this question it becomes evident that in his present
physical existence man is, in a certain sense, always asleep, Only there is a difference
between sleep during the night and sleep during the day. Of this we can be convinced in a
purely external way, for we know that we can wake in the occult sense during the day,
that is to say, one can become clairvoyant and see into the spiritual world. The physical
body in its ordinary state is asleep to what is then and there happening and we can rightly
speak of an awakening of our spiritual senses. In the night, of course, we are asleep in the
normal way. It can therefore be said: ordinary sleep is sleep as regards the outer physical
world; daytime consciousness at the present time is sleep as regards the spiritual world.

These facts can be considered in yet another light. On deeper scrutiny we realise that in
the ordinary waking condition of physical life, man has, as a rule, very little power or
control over his will and its impulses. The will is very detached from daily life. Only
consider how little of all you do from morning to evening is really the outcome of your
own thinking, of your personal resolutions. When someone knocks at the door and you
say "Come in!", that cannot be called a decision of your own thinking and will. If you are
hungry and seat yourself at a table, that cannot be called a decision made by the will,
because it is occasioned by your circumstances, by the needs of your organism. Try to
picture your daily life and you will find how little the will is directly influenced from the
centre of your being. Why is this the case? Occultism shows us that in respect of his will
man actually sleeps by day, that is to say he is not in the real sense present in his will-
impulses at all. We may evolve better and better concepts and ideas; or we may become
more highly moral, more cultured individuals, but we can do nothing as regards the will.
By cultivating better thoughts we can work indirectly upon the will but as far as life is
concerned we can do nothing directly to it, for in the waking life of day, our will is
influenced only in an indirect way, namely through sleep. When we are asleep we do not
think; ideation passes over into a state of sleep. The will, however, awakes, permeates our
organism from outside, and invigorates it. We feel strengthened in the morning because
what has penetrated into our organism is of the nature of will. That we are not aware of

this activity of the will becomes comprehensible when we remember that all conceptual
activity ceases when we ourselves are asleep. To begin with, therefore, this stimulus shall
be given for further contemplation, further meditation. The more progress you make in
self-knowledge, the more you will find confirmation of the truth of the words that man
sleeps in respect of his will when he is awake and sleeps in respect of his conceptual life
when he is asleep. The life of will sleeps by day; the life of thought sleeps by night.

Man is unaware that the will does not sleep during the night because he only knows how
to be awake in his life of thought. The will does not sleep during the night but it then
works as it were in a fiery element, works upon his body in order to restore what has been
used up by day.

Thus there are two poles in man, the life of observation and ideation, and the impulses of
will; and man is related in entirely opposite ways to these two poles. The whole life of
soul moves in various nuances between these two poles, and we shall come nearer to
understanding it by bringing this microcosmic life of soul into relation with the higher
worlds.

From what has been said we have learnt that the life of thought and ideation is one of the
poles of man's life of soul. This life of thought is something which seems unreal to
materialistically minded people. Do we not often hear it said: "Oh, ideas and thoughts are
only ideas and thoughts!" This is intended to imply that if someone has [a piece] of bread
or meat in his hand it is a reality because it cam be eaten, but a thought is only a thought,
it is not a reality. Why is this said? It is because what man calls his thoughts are related to
what thoughts really are as a shadow-image is to the actual thing. The shadow-image of a
flower points you to the flower itself, to the reality. So it is with thoughts. Human
thinking is the shadowing forth of ideas and beings belonging to a higher world, the
world we call the Astral plane. And you represent thinking rightly to yourself when you
picture the human head thus - it is not absolutely correct but simply diagrammatic. In the
head are thoughts but these thoughts must be pictured as living beings on the Astral
plane. Beings of the most varied kinds are at work there in the form of teeming concepts

and activities which cast their shadow-images into men, and these processes are reflected
in the human head as thinking.

Diagram 1

As well as the life of thought in the human soul, there is also the life of feeling. Feelings
fall into two categories: those of pleasure and sympathy and those of displeasure and
antipathy. The former are aroused by good deeds, benevolent dees; antipathy is aroused
by evil, malevolent deeds. Here there is something more than and different from, the
mere forming of concepts. We form concepts of things irrespectively of any other factor.
But our soul experiences sympathy or antipathy only in respect of what is beautiful and
good, or what is ugly and evil. Just as everything that takes place in man in the form of
thoughts points to the Astral plane, so everything connected with sympathy or antipathy
points to the realm we call Lower Devachan. Processes in the Heavenly World, or
Devachan, are projected, mainly into our breast, as feelings of sympathy or antipathy for
what is beautiful or ugly, for what is good or evil. So that in our feelings for the moral-
aesthetic element, we bear within our souls shadow-reflections of the Heavenly World or
Lower Devachan.

There is still a third province in the life of the human soul which must be strictly
distinguished from the mere preference for good deeds. There is a difference between
standing by and taking pleasure in witnessing some kindly deed and setting the will in
action and actually performing some such deed. I will call pleasure in good deeds or
displeasure in evil deeds the aesthetic element as against the moral element that impels a
man to perform some good deed. The moral element is at a higher level than the purely
aesthetic; mere pleasure or displeasure is at a lower level than the will to do something
good or bad. In so far as our soul feels constrained to give expression to moral impulses,
these impulses are the shadow-images of Higher Devachan, of the Higher Heavenly
World.

It is easy to picture these three stages of activity of the human soul - the purely

intellectual (thoughts, concepts), the aesthetic (pleasure or displeasure), and the moral
(revealed in impulses to good or bad deeds) - as microcosmic images of the three realms
which in the Macrocosm, the great Universe, lie one above the other. The Astral world is
reflected in the world of thought; the Devachanic world is reflected in the aesthetic
sphere of pleasure and displeasure; and the Higher Devachanic world is reflected as
morality.

Thoughts: Shadow-images of Beings of the Astral Plane (Waking)

Sympathy and Antipathy: Shadow-images of Beings of Lower Devachan (Dreaming)
Moral Impulses: Shadow-images of Beings of Higher Devachan (Sleeping)

If we connect this with what was said previously concerning the two poles of the soul-
life, we shall take the pole of intellect to be that which dominates the waking life, the life
in which man is mentally awake. During the day he is awake in respect of his intellect;
during sleep he is awake in respect of his will. It is because at night he is asleep in respect
of intellect that he is unaware of what he is happening with his will. The truth is that what
we call moral principles, moral impulses, are working indirectly into the will. And in
point of fact man needs the life of sleep in order that the moral impulses he takes into
himself through the life of thought can become active and effective. In his ordinary life
today man is capable of accomplishing what is right only on the plane of intellect; he is
less able to accomplish anything on the moral plane for there he is dependent upon help
coming from the Macrocosm.

What is already within us can bring about the further development of intellectuality, but
the Gods must come to our aid if we are to acquire greater moral strength. We go to sleep
in order that we may plunge into the Divine Will where the intellect does not intervene
and where Divine Forces transform into the power of will the moral principles we accept,
where they instill into our will that which we could otherwise receive only into our
thoughts.

Between these two poles, that of the will which wakes by night and of the intellect which
is awake by day, lies the sphere of aesthetic appreciation which is continuously present in
man. During the day man is not fully awake - at least only the most prosaic, pedantic
individuals are always fully awake in waking life. We must always be able to dream a
little even by day when we are awake; we must be able to give ourselves up to the
enjoyment art, of poetry, or of some other activity that is not concerned wholly with crass
reality. Those who can give themselves up in this way form a connection with something
that can enliven and invigorate the whole of existence. To give oneself up to such
imaginings is like a dream making its way into waking life. Into the life of sleep you
know well that dreams enter; these dreams in the usual sense, dreams which permeate
sleep-consciousness. Human beings need also to dream by day if they do not wish to lead
an arid, empty, unhealthy waking life. Dreaming takes place during sleep at night in any
case and no proof of this is required. Midway between the two poles of night dreaming
and day dreaming is the condition that can come to expression in fantasy.

So here again there is a threefold life of soul. The intellectual element in which we are
really awake brings us shadow-images of the Astral Plane when by day we give ourselves
up to a thought - wherein the most fruitful ideas for daily life and great inventions
originate. Then during sleep, when we dream, these dreams play into our life of sleep and
shadow-images from Lower Devachan are reflected into us. And when we work actively
during sleep, impressing morality into our will - we cannot be aware of this actual
process but certainly we can of its effects - when we are able to imbue our life of
thoughts during the night with the influence of Divine Spiritual Powers, then the impulses
we receive are reflections from Higher Devachan, the Higher Heavenly World. These
reflections are the moral impulses and feelings which are active within us and lead to the
recognition that human life vindicated only when we place our thoughts at the service of
the good and the beautiful, when we allow the very heart's blood of Divine Spiritual life
to stream through our intellectual activities, permeating them with moral impulses.

The life of the human soul as presented here, first from external, exoteric observation and
then from observation of a more mystical character is revealed by deeper (occult)

investigation. The processes that have been described in their more external aspect can
also be perceived in man through clairvoyance. When a man stands in front of us today in
his waking state and we observe him with the eye of clairvoyance, certain rays of light
are seen streaming continually from the heart towards the head. Within the head these
rays play around the organ known in anatomy as the pineal gland. These streamings arise
because human blood, which is a physical substance, is perpetually resolving itself into
etheric substance. In the region of the heart there is a continual transformation of the
blood into this delicate etheric substance which streams upwards towards the head and
glimmers around the pineal gland. This process - the etherisation of the blood - can be
perceived in the human being all the time during his waking life.

Diagram 2

The occult observer is able to see a continual streaming from outside into the brain, and
also in the reverse direction, from the brain to the heart. Now these streams, which in
sleeping man come from outside, from cosmic space, from the Macrocosm, and flow into
the inner constitution of the physical body and etheric bodies lying in the bed, reveal
something remarkable when they are investigated. These rays vary greatly in different
individuals. Sleeping human beings differ very drastically from one another, and if those
who are a little vain only knew how badly they betray themselves to occult observation
when they go to sleep during public gatherings, they would try their level best not to let
this happen!

Moral qualities are revealed distinctly in the particular colouring of the streams which
flow into human beings during sleep; in an individual of lower moral principles, the
streams are quite different from what is observable in an individual of noble principles.
Endeavours to dissemble are useless. In the face of the higher Cosmic Powers, no
dissembling is possible. In the case of a man who has only a slight inclination towards
moral principles the rays streaming into him are a brownish red in colour - various shades
tending toward brownish red. In a man of high moral ideals the rays are lilac-violet in
colour. At the moment of waking or of going off to sleep a kind of struggle takes place in

the region of the pineal gland between what streams down from above and what streams
upward from below. When a man is awake the intellectual element streams upwards from
below in the form of currents of light, and what is of moral-aesthetic nature streams
downwards from above. At the moment of waking or of going off to sleep, these two
currents meet, and in the man of low morality a violent struggle between the two streams
takes place in the region of the pineal gland. In the man of high morality there is around
the pineal gland as it were a little sea of light. Moral nobility is revealed when a calm
glow surrounds the pineal gland at these moments. In this way a man's moral disposition
is reflected in him, and this calm glow of light often extends as far as the heart. Two
streams can therefore be perceived in man - the one Macrocosmic, the other,
Microcosmic.

To estimate the significance of how these two streams meet in man is possible only by
considering on the one hand what was said previously in a more external way about the
life of the soul and how this life reveals the threefold polarity of the intellectual, the
aesthetic and the moral elements that stream downwards from above, from the brain
toward the heart; and if, on the other hand, we grasp the significance of what was said
about turning our attention to the corresponding phenomenon in the Macrocosm. This
corresponding phenomenon can be described today as the result of the most scrupulously
careful occult investigation of recent years, undertaken by individuals among genuine
Rosicrucians. These investigations have shown that something similar to what has been
described in connection with the Microcosm also takes place in the Macrocosm. You will
understand this more fully as time goes on.

Just as in the region of the human heart the blood is continually being transformed into
etheric substance, a similar process takes place in the Macrocosm. We understand this
when we turn our minds to the Mystery of Golgotha - to the moment when the blood
flowed from the wounds of Jesus Christ.

This blood must not be regarded simply as chemical substance, but by reason of all that
has been said concerning the nature of Jesus of Nazareth it must be recognised as

something altogether unique. When it flowed from His wounds, a substance was imparted
to our Earth, which in uniting with it, constituted an Event of the greatest possible
significance for all future ages of the Earth's evolution - and it could take place only once.
What came of this blood in the ages that followed? Nothing different from what
otherwise takes place in the heart of man. In the course of Earth evolution this blood
passes through a process of "etherisation." And just as our human blood streams upwards
from the heart as ether, so since the Mystery of Golgotha the etherised blood of Christ
Jesus has been present in the ether of the earth. The etheric body of the Earth is
permeated by the blood - now transformed - which flowed on Golgotha. This is
supremely important. If what has thus come to pass through Christ Jesus had not taken
place, man's condition on the Earth could only have been as previously described. But
since the Mystery of Golgotha it has always been possibe for the etheric blood of Christ
to flow together with the streamings from below upward, from heart to head.
Because the etherised blood of Jesus of Nazareth is present in the etheric body of the
Earth, it accompanies the etherised human blood streaming upwards from the heart to the
brain, so that not only those streams of which I spoke earlier meet in man, but the human
blood-stream unites with the blood-stream of Christ Jesus. A union of these two streams
can, however, come about only if a person is able to unfold true understanding of what is
contained in the Christ Impulse. Otherwise there can be no union; the two streams then
mutually repel each other, thrust each other away. In every epoch of Earth evolution
understanding must be acquired in the form suitable for that epoch. At the time when
Christ Jesus lived on Earth, preceding events were rightly understood by those who came
to His forerunner, John, and were baptised by him according to the rite described in the
Gospels. They received baptism in order that their sin, that is to say, the karma of their
previous lives - karma which had come to an end - might be changed; and in order that
they might realise that the most powerful Impulse in Earth evolution was about to
descend into a physical body. But the evolution of humanity progresses and in our
present age what matters is that people should recognise the need for the knowledge
contained in Spiritual Science and be able so to fire the streams flowing from heart to
brain that this knowledge can be understood.

If this comes to pass, individuals will be able to receive and comprehend the event that
has its beginning in the Twentieth Century: thes event is the appearance of the Christ as
an Etheric Being in contradistinction to the Physical Christ of Palestine. For we have
now reached the point of time when the Etheric Christ enters into the life of the Earth and
will become visible - at first to a small number of individuals through a form of natural
clairvoyance. Then in the course of the next three thousand years, He will become visible
to greater and greater numbers of people. This will inevitably come to pass in the natural
course of development. That it will come to pass is as true as were the achievements of
electricity in the nineteenth century. A number of individuals will see the Etheric Christ
and will themselves experience the event that took place at Damascus. But this will
depend upon such men learning to be alert to the moment when Christ draws near to
them. In only a few decades from now it will happen, particularly to those who are young

- already preparation is being made for this - that some individual here or there has
certain experiences. If he has sharpened his vision through having assimilated
Anthroposophy, he may become aware that suddenly someone has come near to help
him, to make him alert to this or that. The truth is that Christ has come to him, although
he believes that what he saw is a physical man. He will come to realise that what he saw
was a supersensible being, because it immediately vanishes. Many a human being will
have this experience when sitting silent in his room, heavy-hearted and oppressed, not
knowing which way to turn. The door will open, and the etheric Christ will appear and
speak words of consolation to him. The Christ will become a living Comforter to men.
However strange it may as yet seem, it is true nevertheless that many a time when people

- even in considerable numbers - are sitting together, not knowing what to do, and
waiting, they will see the Etheric Christ. He will Himself be there, will confer with them,
will make His voice heard in such gatherings. These times are approaching, and the
positive, constructive element now described will take real effect in the evolution of
mankind.

No word shall be said here against the great advances made by culture in our day; these
achievements are essential for the welfare and the freedom of men. But whatever can be
gained in the way of outer progress in mastering the forces of nature, is something small

and insignificant compared with the blessing bestowed upon the individual who
experiences the awakening soul through Christ, the Christ who will now be operative in
human culture and its concerns. Men will thereby acquire forces that make for
unification. In very truth Christ brings constructive forces into human culture and
civilisation.

If we were to look into early post-Atlantean times, we would find that men built their
dwelling places by methods very different from those used in modern life. In those days
they made use of all kinds of growing things. Even when building palaces they
summoned nature to their aid by utilizing plants interlaced with branches of trees and so
on, Whereas today men must build with broken fragments. All the culture of the external
world is contrived with the aid of products of fragmentation. And in the course of the
coming years you will realise even more clearly how much in our civilised life is the
outcome of destruction.

Light itself is being destroyed in this post-Atlantean age of the Earth's existence, which
until the time of Atlantis was a progressive process. Since then it has been a process of
decay.* What is light? Light decays and the decaying light is electricity. What we know
as electricity is light that is being destroyed in matter. And the chemical force that
undergoes a transformation in the process of Earth evolution is magnetism. Yet a third
force will become active and if electricity seems to work wonders today, this third force
will affect civilisation in a still more miraculous way. The more of this force we employ,
the faster the earth will tend to become a corpse and its spiritual part prepare for the
Jupiter embodiment. Forces have to be applied for the purpose of destruction, in order
that man may become free of the Earth and that the Earth's body may fall away. As long
as the earth was involved in progressive ecolution, no such destruction took place, for the
great achievements of electricity can only serve a decaying Earth. Strange as this sounds,
it must gradually become known. By understanding the process of evolution we shall
learn to assess our culture at its true value. We shall also learn that it is necessary for the
Earth to be destroyed, for otherwise the spiritual could not become free. We shall also
learn to value what is positive, namely the penetration of spiritual forces into our

existence on Earth.

* See also the section at the end of the text, containing answers given by Dr. Steiner to
questions.

Thus we realise what a tremendous advance was signified by the fact that Christ lived for
three years on the Earth in a human body specially prepared in order that He might be
visible to physical eyes. Through what came to pass during those three years men have
been made ready to behold the Christ who will move among them in an etheric body,
who will participate in earthly life as truly and effectively as did the Physical Christ in
Palestine. If men observe such happenings with undimmed senses they will know that
there is an etheric body that will move about in the physical world, but is the only etheric
body able to work in the physical world as a human physical body works. It will differ
from a physical body in this respect only, that it can be in two, three, nay even in a
hundred, a thousand places at the same time. This is possible only for an etheric, not for a
physical form. What will be accomplished in humanity through this further advance is
that the two poles of which I have spoken, the intellectual and the moral, will more and
more become one; they will merge into unity. This will come about because in the course
of the next millennia men will become aware of the presence of the Etheric Christ in the
world; more and more they will be influenced in waking life too by the direct working of
the Good from the spiritual world. Whereas at the present time, the will is asleep by day,
and man is only able to influence it indirectly through thought, in the course of the next
millennia, through the power which from our time onwards is working in us under the
aegis of Christ, it will come about that the deeds of men in waking consciousness too can
be directly productive of Good.

The dream of Socrates, that virtue can be taught, will come true; more and more it will be
possible on Earth not only for the intellect to be stimulated and energized by this teaching
but for moral impulses to be spread abroad. Schopenhauer said, "To preach morality is
easy; to establish it is very difficult." Why is this? Because no morality has yet been
spread by preaching. It is quite possible to recognise moral principles and yet not abide

by them. For most people the Pauline saying holds good, that the spirit is willing but the
flesh is weak. This will change, because the moral fire streaming from the figure of
Christ will intensify recognition of the need for moral impulses. Man will transform the
earth by feeling with ever- increasing strength that morality is an essential part of it. In the
future, to be immoral will be possible only for individuals who are goaded in this
direction, who are possessed by evil demons, by Ahrimanic, Asuric Powers and more-
over aspire to be so.

In time to come there will be on Earth a sufficient number of individuals who teach
morality and at the same time sustain its principles; but there will also be those who by
their own free decision surrender themselves to the evil Powers and thus enable an excess
of evil to be pitted against a good humanity. Nobody will be forced to do this; it will lie
in the free will of each individual.

Then will come the epoch when the Earth passes into conditions of which, as in so much
else, Oriental Occultism and Mysticism alone give some idea. The moral atmosphere will
by then have gathered strength. For many thousands of years Oriental Mysticism has
spoken of this epoch, and since the coming of Gautama Buddha it has spoken with
special emphasis about that future condition when the earth will be bathed in a "moral-
ether-atmosphere." Ever since the time of the ancient Rishis it was the great hope of
Oriental Mysticism that this moral impulse would come to the Earth from Vishva-
Karman or, as Zarathustra proclaimed, from Ahura Mazdao. Thus Oriental Mysticism
foresaw that this moral impulse, this moral atmosphere, would come to the Earth from the
Being we call the Christ. And it was upon Him, upon Christ, that the hopes of Oriental
Mysticism were set.

Oriental Mysticism was able to picture the consequences of that event but not the actual
form it would take. The mind could picture that within a period of 5,000 years after the
great Buddha achieved Enlightenment, pure Akashic forms, bathed in fire, lit by the sun,
would appear in the wake of One beyond the ken of Oriental Mysticism. A wonderful
picture in very truth: that something would happen to make it possible for the Sons of

Fire and of Light to move about the Earth, not in physically embodiment but as pure
Akashic forms within the Earth's moral atmosphere. But then, so it was said, in 5,000
years after Gautama Buddha's Enlightenment, the Teacher will also be there to make
known to men what the nature of these wonderful forms of pure Fire and Light. This
teacher - the Maitreya Buddha - will appear 3,000 years after our present era and will
speak of the Christ Impulse.

Thus Oriental Mysticism unites with the Christian knowledge of the West to form a
wonderfully beautiful unity. It is also disclosed that he who will appear three thousand
years after our era as the Maitreya Buddha will have incarnated again and again on the
Earth as a Bodhisattva, as the successor of Gautama Buddha. One of his incarnations was
that of Jeshu ben Pandira, who lived a hundred years before the Christian era. The being
who incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira is he who will one day become the Maitreya
Buddha, and who from century to century returns ever and again in a body of flesh, not
yet as Buddha, but as Bodhisattva. Even now there proceeds from him who later on will
be the Maitreya Buddha, the most significant teachings concerning the Christ Being and
the Sons of Fire - the Agnishvattas - of Indian Mysticism.

The indications by which the Being who is to become the Maitreya Buddha can be
recognised are common to all genuine Eastern mysticism and to Christian gnosis. The
Maitreya Buddha who, in contrast to the Sons of Fire, will appear in a physical body as
Bodhisattva, can be recognised by the fact that in the first instance his early development
gives no intimation of the nature of the individuality within him. Only those possessed of
understanding will recognise the presence of a Bodhisattva in such a human being
between the ages of thirty and thirty-three, and not before. Something akin to a change of
personality then takes place. The Maitreya Buddha will reveal his identity to humanity in
the thirty-third year of his life. As Christ Jesus began His mission in His thirtieth year, so
do the Bodhisattvas, who will continue to proclaim the Christ Impulse, reveal themselves
- in the thirty-third year of their lives. And the Maitreya Buddha himself, as transformed
Bodhisattva, speaking in powerful words of which no adequate idea can be given at the
present time, will proclaim the great secrets of existence. He will speak in a language that

has first be created, for no human being to-day could formulate words such as those in
which the Maitreya Buddha will address humanity. The reason why men cannot be
addressed in this way at the present time is that the physical instrument for this form of
speech does not yet exist. The teachings of the Enlightened One will not stream into men
as teachings only, but will pour moral impulses into their souls. Words such as will then
be spoken cannot yet be uttered by a physical larynx; in our time they can be present only
in the spiritual worlds.

Anthroposophy is the preparation for everything that the future holds in store. Those who
take the process of man's evolution seriously resolve not to allow the soul's development
to come to a standstill but to ensure that this development will eventually enable the
spiritual part of the Earth to become free, leaving the grosser part to fall away like a
corpse - for men could frustrate the whole process. Those who desire evolution to
succeed must acquire understanding of the life of the spirit through what we to-day call
Anthroposophy. The cultivation of Anthroposophy thus becomes a duty; knowledge
becomes something that we actually feel, something towards which we have
responsibility. When we are inwardly aware of this responsibility and have this resolve,
when the mysteries of the world arouse in us the wish to become Anthroposophists, then
our feeling is true and right. But Anthroposophy must not be something that merely
satisfies our curiosity; it must rather be something without which we cannot live. Only
then are our feelings what they ought to be, only then do we live as building stones in that
great work of construction which must be carried out in human souls and can embrace all
mankind.

Anthroposophy is a revelation of world-happenings which will confront the men of the
future, will confront our own souls whether still in the physical body or in the life
between death and a new birth. The coming changes will affect us, no matter whether we
are still living in the physical body or whether it has been laid aside. Understanding of
these events must however be acquired during life in the physical body if they are to take
effect after death. To those who acquire some understanding of the Christ while they are
still living in the physical body, it will make no difference, when the moment comes for

vision of the Christ, whether or not they have already passed through the gate of death.
But if those who now reject any understanding of the Christ have already passed through
the gate of death when this moment arrives, they must wait until their next incarnation,
for such understanding cannot be acquired between death and rebirth. Once the
foundation has been acquired, however, it endures, and then Christ becomes visible also
during the period between death and the new birth.

And so Anthroposophy is not only something we learn for our physical life but is of
essential value when we have laid aside the physical body at death.

This is what I wished to impart to you today as a help in answering many questions. Self-
knowledge is difficult because man is such a complex being. The reason for this
complexity is that he is connected with all the higher Worlds and Beings. We have within
us shadow-images of the great Universe and all the members of our constitution - the
physical, etheric, astral bodies and the ego - are worlds for Divine Beings. Our physical
body, etheric body, astral body and ego form one world; the other is the higher World,
the hEaven world. Divine- spiritual Worlds are the bodily members of the Beings of the
higher spheres of cosmic existence.

Man is the complex being he is because he is a mirror-image of the spiritual world.
Realisation of this should make him conscious of his intrinsic worth. But from the
knowledge that although we are reflected images of the spiritual world we nevertheless
fall far short of what we ought to be - from this knowledge we also acquire, as well as
consciousness of our worth as human beings, the right attitude of modesty and humility
towards the Macrocosm and its Gods.

Rudolf Steiner's Answers to Questions at the End of the Lecture

Translated by George Adams
Question: How are the words used by St. Paul, "to speak in tongues" (Cor. I: 12), to be
understood?

Answer: In exceptional human beings it can happen that not only is the phenomenon of
speaking present in the waking state, but that something otherwise present in sleep-
consciousness only, flows into this speaking. This is the phenomenon to which St. Paul
refers. Goethe refers to it in the same sense; he has written two very interesting treatises
on the subject.

Question: How are Christ's words of consolation received and experienced?

Answer: Men will feel these words of consolation as though arising in their own hearts.

The experience may also seem like physical hearing.

Question: What is the relation of chemical forces and substances to the spiritual world?
Answer: There are in the world a number of substances which can combine with or
separate from each other. What we call chemical action is projected into the physical
world from the world of Devachan - the realm of the Harmony of the Spheres. In the
combination of two substances according to their atomic weights, we have a reflection of
two tones of the Harmony of the Spheres. The chemical affinity between two substances
in the physical world is like a reflection from the realm of the Harmony of the Spheres.
The numerical ratios in chemistry are an expression of the numerical ratios of the
Harmony of the Spheres, which has become dumb and silent owing to the densification
of matter. If one were able to etherealise material substance and to perceive the atomic
numbers the inner formative principle thereof, he would be hearing the Harmony of the
Spheres.

We have the physical world, the astral world, the Lower Devachan and the Higher
Devachan. If the body is thrust down lower even than the physical world, it comes into
the sub-physical world, the lower astral world, the lower or evil Lower Devachan, and the
lower or evil Higher Devachan. The evil astral world is the province of Lucifer, the evil
Lower Devachan the province of Ahriman, and the evil Higher Devachan the province of

the Asuras. When chemical action is driven down beneath the physical plane - into the
evil Devachanic world - magnetism arises. When light is thrust down into the sub-
material - that is to say, a stage deeper than the material world - electricity arises. If what
lives in the Harmony of the Spheres is thrust down farther still, into the province of the
Asuras, an even more terrible force - which it will not be possible to keep hidden very
much longer - is generated. It can only be hoped that when this force comes to be known
- a force we must conceive as being far, far stronger than the most violent electrical
discharge - it can only be hoped that before some discoverer gives this force into the
hands of humankind, men will no longer have anything un-moral left in them.
Question: What is electricity?

Answer: Electricity is light in the sub-material state. Light is there compressed to the
utmost degree. An inward quality too must be ascribed to light; light is itself at every
point in space. Warmth will expand in the three dimensions of space. In light there is a
fourth; it is of fourfold extension - it has the quality of inwardness as a fourth dimension.
Question: What happens to the Earth's corpse?

Answer: As the residue of the Moon-evolution we have our present moon which circles
around the Earth. Similarly there will be a residue of the Earth which will circle around
Jupiter. Then these residues will gradually dissolve into the universal ether. On Venus
there will no longer be any residue. Venus will manifest, to begin with, as pure Warmth,
then it will become Light and then pass over into the spiritual world. The residue left
behind by the Earth will be like a corpse. This is a path along which man must not
accompany the Earth, for he would thereby be exposed to dreadful torments. But there
are Beings who accompany this corpse, since they themselves will by that means develop
to a higher stage.

Reflected as sub-physical world:

Astral World - the province of Lucifer
Lower Devachan- the province of Ahriman
Higher Devachan - the province of the Asuras

Diagram3

Translated from a shorthand report unrevised by the lecturer. The volume of the
Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner containing the original text of the
following lecture, among twenty-two others, is entitled: Das esoterische Christentum und
die geistige Fiihrung der Menschiheit.. (No. 130 in the Bibliographical Survey,
1961). This English edition of the following lecture is published by permission of the
Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland.

The Four Sacrifices of Christ

A Lecture By Rudolf SteinerBasel, 01 June 1914GA 152

In our present civilization we need, above all, a new knowledge of Christ. This new
Christ knowledge is to be gained increasingly through the effects upon us of the science
of the spirit. Much, however, that today bears the official seal of Christianity is
antagonistic to this new knowledge. It must come to be realized that a school of
unselfishness is needed in our present culture. A renewing of responsibility, a deepening
of man's moral life, can come only through a training in unselfishness, and under the
conditions of the present age only those can go through this school who have won for
themselves an understanding of real, all-pervading selflessness.

We can search through the entire evolution of the world without finding a deeper
understanding of selflessness than that offered by Christ's appearance upon earth. To
know Christ is to go through the school of unselfishness, and to become acquainted with
all those incentives to human development that fall gently into our souls, warming and
animating every unselfish inclination within us, arousing it from passive to active soul
life.

Under the influence of materialism the natural unselfishness of mankind was lost to an
extent that will be fully realized only in the distant future. But by contemplating the
Mystery of Golgotha, by permeating our knowledge of it with all our feeling, we may
acquire again, with our whole soul-being, an education in selflessness. We may say that
what Christ did for earthly evolution was included in the fundamental impulse of
selflessness, and what He may become for the conscious development of the human soul
is the school of unselfishness. We shall best realize this if we consider the Mystery of
Golgotha in its most inclusive connection.

This mystery, as we know it, took place once in the physical evolution of the earth. The
Being whom we acknowledge as the Christ clothed Himself once in a human body, in the

body of Jesus of Nazareth. But this act was preceded by three preparatory steps. Three
times earlier something of a similar nature occurred, not as yet on earth but in the
spiritual world, and we have in a sense, three Mysteries of Golgotha that had not yet been
fulfilled upon the physical plane. Only the fourth took place in the physical realm, as
related in the Gospels and in the Pauline Epistles. This greatest of earthly events was
prepared for by three supramundane acts, one taking place in the old Lemurian period
and two in the Atlantean. Although these three preparatory events occurred in the
supramundane sphere, their power descended to the earth; we shall try to understand the
effect of these forces upon human evolution.

In relation to our moral life, our understanding of the world, and in relation to all the
activities of our consciousness soul, we must first become selfless. This is a duty of our
present culture to the future. Mankind must become more and more selfless; therein lies
the future of right living, and of all the deeds of love possible to earthly humanity. Our
conscious life is and must be on its way to unselfishness. In a certain connection,
essential unselfishness already exists in us, and it would be the greatest misfortune for
earthly man if certain sections of his being were as self-seeking as he still is in his moral,
intellectual and emotional life. If the same degree of selfishness could take over our
senses, it would be a great misfortune because our senses now work in our bodies in a
truly unselfish manner.

We have eyes in our body; through these eyes we see, but only because they are selfless
and we do not feel them. We see things through them, but the eyes themselves are apart
from our perception; it is the same with the other senses. Let us assume that our eyes
were self-seeking. What would happen to men? We should approach the color blue, for
example, and because our eyes would use up the color immediately within themselves
instead of letting it pass through, we should feel a sort of suction in the eyes. If our eyes
were as selfish as we are in our moral, intellectual and emotional life, and they wished to
experience the effect of red in themselves, we should feel a sharp stab. If our eyes were
self- seeking, all our impressions would give us sucking or stabbing pains. We should be
painfully conscious that we have eyes. Today, however, humanity is aware of color and

light without having to think of the seeing process. The eye is selflessly extinguished
during perception. It is the same with the other senses.

In our senses unselfishness reigns, but they would never have reached this unselfishness
if Lucifer, even in the old Lemurian age, had been left to his own devices. The spirit who
said, as related in the Bible, "Your eyes shall be opened," made it necessary to transfer
man to a sphere of earthly life in which his eyes, if they had developed as they would
have done under Lucifer's influence, would have become self-seeking. With every
impression - and it would have been the same with the other senses - man would have
cried out, "Oh, it stabs me here!" He would not have perceived red in his environment.
Or he would have said, "Oh, something sucks in my eyes!" He would not have been
aware of the color blue, but would have simply felt the suction. This danger to humanity
was averted in the Lemurian age by a Being Who later, through the Mystery of Golgotha,
incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In this earlier age, however, He ensouled
Himself - 1 cannot say incarnated - in one of the archangels.

While the earth was working through the Lemurian age, a Being living in spiritual
heights became manifest - one might say, as a sort of prophecy of John's baptism - in an
archangel who offered up his soul powers, and was thus permeated by the Christ.
Through this means a force was released that acted within human evolution upon earth.
Its effect was a quieting and harmonizing of our senses so that today we can use them and
find them selfless. If we, understanding this, have become grateful to the world order, we
shall say, looking back to these ancient times, that what makes it possible for us as
sensory beings to enjoy without pain all the splendor of surrounding nature is Christ's
first sacrifice. By ensouling Himself in an archangel He brought forth the power to avert
the danger of the selfish senses in man. That was the first step leading to the Mystery of
Golgotha.

The human being will gradually learn to develop this deep, significant and religious
feeling when he is confronted with the beauty of nature, when he looks up at the starry
heavens and at all that the sun illumines in the animal, mineral and vegetable kingdoms.

He will learn to say, "That I am so placed in the world that I can look at it around me, my
senses being instruments for the perception of its splendor rather than sources of pain, I
owe to Christ's first sacrifice in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha." In perspective
we see before us a time in which all observation and enjoyment of nature will be
permeated by Christ; when men, refreshing themselves in an invigorating springtime, in
the warmth of summer, or in any of the other delights of nature, will say to themselves,
"In taking up all this beauty into ourselves, we must realize that it is not ourselves, but
Christ within our senses Who enables us to experience it."

In the first period of the Atlantean evolution selfishness tried - this time through Lucifer
and Ahriman - to take possession of another part of the human organism; that is, the vital
organs. With this in mind, let us consider what is intrinsic in our life-organism. What is
its essential nature? You need only think what it is like when injured by organic disease.
Then man begins to suffer from the self-seeking of heart, lungs, stomach or other organs,
and the time comes when man knows that he has a heart or stomach, knows it by direct
experience, because he has a pain. To be ill means that an organ has become selfish and
is leading its own independent life within us. In ordinary normal conditions this is not the
case. Then the single organs live selflessly within us. Our everyday constitution holds us
up securely in the physical world only when we do not feel that we have stomach, lungs,
etc., but have them without feeling them, when they do not demand our attention but
remain unselfish servants of the body.

On some other occasion and at some other time we shall consider the reason why illness
results from the selfishness of our organs. Today we will confine our discussion to
normal conditions. Had it depended upon Lucifer and Ahriman, quite a different state
would have existed as early as the Atlantean period. Every single human organ would
have been self- seeking, and the results most extraordinary. Assume, for example, that the
human being looked at a fruit or something else in the outer world that can be eaten, or
that stands in some sort of relation to his vital organs. Someday these relations of the
outer world with our organs will be the subject of genuine scientific study. If the other
sciences allow themselves to be aligned with spiritual science, it will be known that when

a human being gathers cherries from a tree and eats them, something enters with the
cherries that is related to a particular organ; other fruits are related to other organs.
Everything that enters the human organism is in some way related to it. If Lucifer and
Ahriman could have carried out their designs during the Atlantean period, then, when we
picked cherries, for example, the related organ would have felt an inordinate greed. The
human being would have felt, not the self-seeking organ only, but all the other organs
also, striving against it with equal selfishness! Let us take a different case. Suppose
something harmful were present, for while certain things in the world are related to
humanity in a beneficial way, others affect it injuriously. Suppose someone were to
approach a poisonous plant, or anything else harmful to this or that organ; he would then
recognize that he was confronting something that gave a burnt out feeling to one of his
organs.

Now let us consider not what we eat, but the air surrounding us. Every element of the
atmosphere is related to our organs. If we had become what Lucifer and Ahriman
intended and had been thrown upon our own resources, we should have been chased
about the world by animal desires for what satisfied one organ or another, or by terrible
disgust for all that was injurious. Just imagine how we could possibly develop ourselves
in this world if we had such physical organs that we were tossed to and fro like a rubber
ball, a plaything for every agreeable odor that we would run after, or were forced by
nausea to flee from. That this did not happen, that our vital organs were subdued and
harmonized resulted from the great event in the first Atlantean epoch when, in
supramundane spheres, the second step was taken toward the Mystery of Golgotha. The
Christ Being ensouled Himself again in an archangel, and what was accomplished by this
deed shone down into the earth's atmosphere. Then that harmonizing and balancing of the
vital organs took place that rendered them selfless.

In our connection with the outer world we should be continuously exposed to severe
illnesses and we could not be at all healthy but for this second Christ event. We see in
perspective for the future that the human being will acquire, when he is able to imbue
himself with a true understanding of the spiritual world, a feeling of gratitude toward the

spiritual beings upon whom humanity depends. He will say in true piety, "I realize that I
am able to exist as a physical man with unselfish organs because not I alone have
developed myself in the world, but Christ in me, Who has so conditioned my organs that
I can be a man!" Thus we come to learn so to regard all that makes us human,
fundamentally and in the most comprehensive sense, that we say, "Not I, but Christ in
me." In His three preparatory steps, taken before the actual Mystery of Golgotha, Christ
provided for the complete evolution of humanity.

In the last part of the Atlantean period humanity faced a third danger. Thinking, feeling
and willing were threatened with disorder through the entrance of selfishness. What
would have been the result of this? Well, the human being would have intended this or
that, and followed this or that impulse of will, while his thinking would have impelled
him in quite a different direction, and his feeling in still another. It was necessary for
human evolution that thinking, feeling and willing should become unselfish members of
the united soul. Under the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman they could not have done
this. Thought, feeling and will, becoming independently self-seeking, would have rent
asunder the harmonious working of the Christ. In consequence, toward the end of the
Atlantean evolution, the third Christ event occurred. Once more the Christ Being
ensouled Himself in an archangel, and the power thus generated in the spiritual world
made possible the harmonization of thinking, feeling and willing. Truly, as the rays of the
physical sun must act upon earth to prevent the withering of plant life, so must the Sun
Spirit be reflected upon earth from supramundane spheres as I have just explained.
What would have become of the human being without this third Christ event? As if by
furies, he would have been seized by his unruly desires, by the activity of his will. He
might have gone mad even though his self- seeking reason might have thought with
scornful mockery about all that the raging will brought forth. This was averted by the
third Christ event when Christ took for the third time the soul of an archangel as an outer
vehicle.

Mankind has preserved some memory of how human passion and human thinking were
harmonized at this period by forces that descended from supramundane worlds, but the

sign of this memory is not rightly understood. St. George who conquers the dragon, or
Michael who conquers the dragon, are symbols of the third Christ event, when Christ
ensouled Himself in an archangel. It is the dragon, trodden under foot, that has brought
thinking, feeling and willing into disorder. All who turn their gaze upon St. George or
Michael with the dragon, or some similar episode, perceive, in reality, the third Christ
event. The Greeks who in their wonderful mythology made copies of what happened in
the spiritual world at the end of the Atlantean age, revered the Sun Spirit as the
harmonizer of man's thinking, feeling and willing. "Thou Sun Spirit," so said those who
knew something about it, "Thou hast ensouled Thyself in an etheric spirit form," for such
is the form of those we call archangels today; "Thou has brought thinking, feeling and
willing, which might otherwise rage through us in confusion, into order with Thy lyre,
sounding upon it harmoniously the tones of the human soul!"

So the Sun Spirit became the guardian of the wild, stormy passions when they, as it
sometimes happened, gushed forth in the fumes that rise from within the earth and break
through its surface. If a human being should expose himself to them and allow only these
vapors to work upon him, then thought, feeling and will would rage madly within him.
The Greeks placed the Pythia over those vapors, which, in rising out of the earth, bring
the passions into disorder through Lucifer and Ahriman. But Apollo shone upon the
Pythia, conquered the unruly passions and she became a sibyl. For the Greeks, Apollo,
the Sun Spirit, represented the Christ at the stage of His third sacrifice, and the results of
Christ's deed were discerned in the attuning of men's passions under the power of the
Pythia, conferred upon her by the god Apollo. In this connection Apollo was to the
Greeks what is expressed in the victory of Michael or St. George over the dragon.
We see also the meaning of the extraordinary pronouncement of Justin Martyr, a saying
which, since it emanated from him, we must regard as Christian, although many
representatives of Christianity today would consider it heretical. Justin said, "Heraclites,
Socrates and Plato were also Christians, the only kind of Christians possible before the
actual consummation of the Mystery of Golgotha." Theologians of today no longer
realize it but in the first centuries of Christianity the Christian martyrs still knew that the
old Greek sages, although they did not use the name of Christ, if asked about Apollo,

would have answered out of their Mystery wisdom, "The great Sun Spirit, Who in the
future will live as a man on earth, appears to us in Apollo as though ensouled in him in
the form of an archangel."

Then came the fourth, the earthly mystery, that of Golgotha. The same Christ Being Who
had ensouled Himself three times in archangelic form incarnated through what we call
the Baptism by John in the Jordan in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

I admit that it may seem strange when I say that this great Being was ensouled three
times in an archangelic form, and then incarnated in a human being. It would seem a
more orderly progression if between His ensoulment as an archangel and His human
incarnation He had taken an angelic form. So it may seem to us. Yet, even though it is
claimed that the statements of spiritual science are fictitious, truly it is not so. You may
gather this from corroborative evidence. If you ask me how it happens that Christ did not
descend from hierarchy to hierarchy and only afterward to man - if you were to ask me
that, I could only answer that I do not know, for I never make theoretical combinations.
The facts adduced by spiritual research are that Christ chose three times an archangelic
form, leaving out the angelic form, and then made use of a human body. I leave it to
future research to determine the reason, which I do not yet know, though I do know that it
is true.

Then came the fourth step in the Mystery of Golgotha, and this averted another danger,
that of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences upon the human ego or I. In the Lemurian
age the sense organs would have become disordered through Lucifer; in the first
Atlantean period the vital organs were threatened with disorder and disharmony, and in
the late Atlantean era the soul organs, the organs that underlie thinking, feeling and
willing. In the post- Atlantean period the human ego itself was endangered.
Because the ego or I at this time was to take its place as a living factor in human
evolution, an effort was made to establish harmony between this ego and the powers of
the cosmos lest it become their plaything. This might have happened. The ego might have
so developed that it could not keep a hold upon itself, and had it been delivered to these

forces, everything that came from the soul would have been overpowered by all sorts of
elemental forces that arise from wind, air or water. They would have driven the human
being violently in all directions.

Michelangelo painted it. In the Sibyls he showed what had threatened mankind. With
wonderful skill he made them express the human types of those who felt the coming
derangement of the ego, so that although all possible wisdom might come forth, human
beings could neither manage nor direct it. Look at the way in which Michelangelo has
painted the different degrees of derangement in egos given over to elemental beings.
Upon the other side, however, he gives us something else. In the same space he has
painted the musing figures of prophecy whose aspect shows the illumination of what
preserves the integrity of the ego toward the cosmos. It touches us deeply when we see in
the prophets the urgency, the pressure toward the ego and, on the other side, human
beings suffering disorder through the ego itself. Then, standing in this space, is the Christ,
incarnate in a human body, Who had to bring into order and harmony the ego that was to
come into the world.

Yes, the science of the spirit will impress upon us ever more deeply that this human ego,
through the fourth Christ event, the Mystery of Golgotha, can come to true unselfishness.
The senses have said, "Not I, but Christ in us." The vital organs have said, "Not I, but
Christ in us." In his moral and intellectual life man must learn to say, "Not I, but Christ in
me." Every step into the spiritual world shows us this.

I wished to explain this today in order that upon another occasion in the near future we
may offer certain occult proofs of these facts in order to show that what we call spiritual
science will pour itself into our moral and intellectual lives in such a way that human
beings may become students of selflessness, that Christ may live within us so that we
may feel Him vitally in every word that is uttered in discussions of spiritual science.
One more thing, my dear friends. You know that since 1909 we have been producing our
Mystery Dramas in Munich. What we presented on the stage there may be considered
good or bad; that is not the present question. What was done there, however, required a

certain spiritual power, a power that does not approach the human being simply because
of his existence upon earth. Since we can now work in Dornach and carve our different
kinds of hard wood, we need muscular strength. We cannot say that we can give this
strength to ourselves consciously. It comes from our bodies, from our souls' capacity; it is
not under our control. Equally, we have not under our control all that we perform in the
spirit and for which we need spiritual power. That is not entirely dependent upon our
natural ability, just as what we do physically is not dependent alone upon our talents but
also upon the muscular strength of our bodies. We need spiritual powers that are as much
outside ourselves as our muscular strength is outside our souls. I know that superficial
critics may say, "You are a fool; you believe that spiritual powers come to you from
without, whereas they simply rise from your own inner being." Let them think me a fool;
I regard them as belonging to the clever men who cannot distinguish hunger from a piece
of bread. I know how spiritual powers from without flow into human beings. The idea
that hunger creates the bread that satisfies it - believed only by a crazy man - is as false as
that the power of our own soul can create the forces needed for our spiritual activities.
These forces must flow into us. Just as we know clearly that our hunger is within us, and
that bread comes from without, does one who lives in spiritual worlds know what is
within himself and what comes to him from without. Since 1909 I have felt personally,
more and more, the spiritual power that came from without whenever there was occasion
to develop, in stillness and calm, what was necessary for the Mystery Plays. I knew that a
spiritual eye was resting upon what had been accomplished, and I relate this as a direct
experience.

In the early days, when we were working at spiritual science in Germany, an
acquaintance came to us who accepted with enthusiasm what we were able to give at that
time. She accepted what it was possible to give out concerning human evolution, cosmic
mysteries, reincarnation and karma, not only with devotion and enthusiasm but added to
them a wonderful aesthetic sense. Every experience with this person, whether of teaching
or conversation, was steeped in beauty. We were few at that time. We had no need to
crowd ourselves into such a room as this, and what we now say to a large audience was
then discussed by three people - two others and myself. One of these, the person

mentioned above, left us upon the physical plane in 1904, and entered the spiritual world.
Such people go through a development after death. When we produced Schure's
reconstruction of the Mystery ofEleusis at our Congress in 1907, no spiritual influence
was perceptible. In 1909 it began, and has come more and more frequently since then. I
have accurate knowledge that it was the individuality of our friend whom, objectively and
because of her originality, we all loved. Removed to the spiritual world, she acted as a
guardian angel to all that we accomplished in the combining of the aesthetic and esoteric
elements in our Mysteries. We felt well protected, and looked gratefully upward,
realizing that what penetrated us and flowed over into our earthly activities was an
expression of the watchfulness of a spiritual personality. But then when it came to
conversation with this personality - one may call it conversation since there was a certain
reciprocal action - she asserted that she found the way to us easier the more we were
permeated with the thought of Christ in the evolution of the earth. If I were to put into
earthly words what she reiterated, I should say, expressing symbolically, of course, what
is quite different in the spiritual world, "I find the way to you so easily because you are
finding evermore the way to make spiritual science into an expression of the living Word
of Christ."

The Christ impulse will become for us the living bridge between earthly life and life in
superphysical worlds. From the spiritual world Christ three times conditioned for the
human being the spiritual constitution that he needed in order to live rightly. Christ
intervened three times, making the human sense, life and psychic organs unselfish. It is
now man's task to learn unselfishness in his moral and intellectual life through his
understanding of the saying, "Not I, but Christ in me."

The world will recognize that the message of the science of the spirit is the Word of
Christ. He said, "I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." The mission of
the science of the spirit in our age is to open doors to the living Christ. The dead, who
know that Christ has found the passage from heaven to earthly activities, unite with the
understanding of the living. If the dead, as their nearest protectors, bend to the earthly
living, they will find those souls most intensive who are penetrated and spiritualized by

the Christ impulse. Christ, as the great Sun Spirit, descended from superphysical worlds
through the Mystery of Golgotha in order to find a dwelling in the souls of men. Spiritual
science is to be the message, telling how Christ may find that dwelling in human souls. If
Christ will find His abode in men's earthly souls, then the Christ power will stream back
from the earth's aura into the worlds that He forsook for the salvation of mankind, and the
whole cosmos will be permeated through and through by Him.

We can work up gradually to such a deep understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha as
this by completely imbuing ourselves with spiritual science. If we thus consider this and,
in addition, think of it as a school of unselfishness for the intellectual and moral life of
future humanity, we shall realize the necessity of the spiritually scientific proclamation of
the Mystery of Golgotha! Then we shall know the meaning of the spiritually scientific
impulses that are striving to enter our present life. Then that Christ impulse will penetrate
humanity that all men can, indeed, accept, for Christ did not appear to one nation only
but, being the great Sun Spirit, He belongs to the whole earth and can enter all human
souls, regardless of nation and religion. May many gradually find the way to such an
understanding of the Christ impulse and of the Mystery of Golgotha! Then, perhaps, that
will appear the most Christian that today is stamped as unchristian and heretical.
If we strive, not for a mere intellectual understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, but for
the ability to grasp it with our whole souls, we then need the science of the spirit and, as
members of our spiritual stream, we shall belong to those souls who are permitted to
know and understand the necessities of mankind now and in the immediate future.

This lecture, given in Basel, June 1, 1914, is included in Vorstufen zum Mysterium von
Golgotha (#152 of the Bibliographic Survey, 1961). It was translated from the original
German by May Laird-Brown, and edited for this edition by Gilbert Church, Ph.D.
Copyright ©1944This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of:The
Anthroposophic Press.